We live not only inside a body but within a story as well, and our story resides in the land as sure as the vision of Dorothea Lange's desperate, run… - Linda Hogan

Sometimes now I hear the voice of my great-grandmother, Agnes. It floats toward me like a soft breeze through an open window. (beginning of Prologue)

the evidence of healing is all around us. A scar, for instance, is evidence that a wound has healed. But the poems are also about wilderness; they're about animals that live in the wilderness and humans who go into the human wilderness, and who also fear the wilderness outside them. In some ways the poems are an investigation of the depths of people, the history of land.

It's not my purpose to please all people. It's my purpose to write the most honest feeling work I can, work with integrity and respect for life.