Fiction. Part futuristic fiction and part meditative memoir, THAT NIGHT ALIVE begins on the narrator's death date and moves backward in time to tell her story. She traces her path as a successful crypto-reporter, navigating a life of secrecy and solitude and world travel. A counter-narrative intersects, told by the same woman as a young artist struggling to create a work of beauty. THAT NIGHT ALIVE investigates art and failure, persistence and success.
"Beautifully paced, THAT NIGHT ALIVE records a woman's yearning to make something lasting in a post-apocalyptic world of surveillance and subterfuge where genuine art is forbidden. Tara Deal's ambitious, inventive, continually surprising, and finely etched novella immerses us in a woman's struggles and rewards the most close and attentive reading." Lee Upton
"In Tara Deal's THAT NIGHT ALIVE moments as vivid and complex as any actually lived weave a narrative of compelling intimacy. Unexpected images ask to be unpacked, considered, and remembered. The narrative plays with time in a language that provokes curiosity as we progress into the text and its world." Andrew Davison, Managing Editor, Glassworks Magazine"