From the Back Cover
"My father and mother married in June of 1933. A year later, in the summer of 1934, my father began building their house and my parents began teaching me to write--eleven years before I was born. At the time, they didn't know that was what they were doing. They thought they were building a house."
--from "Start with a Shovel"
Family and the afterlife. Grief and adventure. The power of story. Violins and resonance. Humour and ravens and teachers. The value of necessary work. Nature and play, neighbours and music. Aging with courage and grace.
These are the subjects of the poetry, short plays, and prose--both fiction and nonfiction--written over decades and collected in this book.
"Let me tell you quickly this is a beautiful book. Not in how it looks but in what it says and what it does and how it makes the reader feel. Reading it, I often paused frequently, giving attention to what had just happened. A phrase. An image. A rich and layered insight. A gentle cascade of layered, rich insights. This is a book full of so many gifts and of such beauty."
--Michael Sobota, the Chronicle Journal
