The Hour of Departure by Sonja de Vries

In this very personal and intimate collection, Sonja DeVries immerses the reader into a world of death and desire, of love and leavings. Nascar racing and racing against mortality, she chronicles with an exquisite ear an existence of disappearing men: father, brother, husband. But as with her previous anthologies, loss lives alongside beauty: a lover who is a felon who is a lover of the works of Twain, the magnificence of the unique (This leg I used to drag behind me, / covered in long skirts, this leg, / now tingling, now shining), and always, always the resilience of humanity.

–Kia Corthron, author of The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter

In this new collection, DeVries turns an unflinching focus on the choices we make while learning to cope with impermanence. This is a journey to remain open despite how people are at once terrifying, and soothing to each other and often, a measure of where we find ourselves at any given point.

–Sheri L Wright, Two-time Pushcart Prize and Kentucky Poet Laureate nominee