"Instructive as well as entertaining. Mayo’s book dazzles."

– New York Times Book Review

"Truth regularly outdoes fiction in this unpredictable book. Rollicking fun, written with rude energy and humor."

– Wall Street Journal

"The passions unleashed in this riveting account places black against white, Americans against Britons, and the stirring soul of a forbidden love caught in between. It’s a rapid page-turner with dark humor, intellectual heft, and a gallery of deeply human characters that shake our spirits."

– Sir Kenneth Branagh

"Wonderful—a story I never heard before, told with style, pace, character, texture, and tension. Bliss."

– Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Like Thomas Keneally’s The Playmaker, this novel, based on historical record, stirringly dramatizes how theater, stories, and art can be used as a vehicle of uplift in the midst of the most trying, dehumanizing circumstances. Mayo has created a searing portrait of humanity at its most brutal and tender."

– Publishers Weekly

"Mayo has shone a dramatic spotlight on a hotbed of racial tension and a unique pursuit of creativity that will leave readers rapt from the story’s beginning to its conclusion."

– BookTrib

"Bristling with energy, written with passion, Mad Blood Stirring is a joy to read."

– John Boyne, New York Times bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas