“The gentle candor and vulnerability of these poems, matched with their hard-won truths, are possible only because their speaker has lived the ‘myth’ of paradise and family so deeply that myth has become an eloquently distilled memoir. Nearly every poem is an encounter with the human heart, acknowledging betrayal, anger, loneliness, longing, grief—gratitude also. These poems are grounded in a compassion that is never shallowly rooted.” —Margaret Gibson