“When I was a boy, Jess Wilson, as my scoutmaster, unknowingly helped me navigate a difficult childhood. In later years, he showed me what your dream can look like if you dare build it. When he was old and near death, a shadow of his former self, he enabled me to understand that when a spirit is large enough, even its shadow can be formidable. This book of heartfelt, pitch-perfect poems by daughters Gail and Sammie creates a vivid portrait of Jess as a father. An essential part of his legacy, it reaches a high mark by doing him justice.”
–Mike Norris, author of Mommy Goose: Rhymes from the Mountains and Bright Blue Rooster
“These poems are as spare and beautiful as a good clean bone, and they testify to a life as plainly and perfectly as does a bone. To anyone who has family roots in Appalachia, the words and their rhythms will be family language. The old rooms, the animals in the twilight woods, the people–like the hired man who comes wordlessly to the door, smelling of drink, as the homeplace is sold–will be wrenchingly familiar. But even if the Appalachian rhythms and images are not yours, the poems will still be family language, because they come as deeply and surely from being a family as do grey eyes or black hair. Jess Wilson tells his daughter, “I see your fingers doing what I would do. It’s like watching my own hands.”The poets, Sammie and Gail, use words the way their father used tools: to do what needs to be done with what’s to hand, and to do it with elegant exactness. Death, their father’s and everyone else’s, receives the same treatment. “Make room in all travel for the funeral clothes,” we’re told. Make room, these poems tell us, for what’s true, what’s real, what’s beloved.”
–Judith Rock, author of the Charles du Luc historical mystery novels: The Rhetoric of Death, The Eloquence of Blood, A Plague of Lies, The Whispering of Bones by Berkley/Penguin.
“Spare reality and tender moments are woven into vivid poems by two gifted storytellers and sisters. Skillfully crafted in different voices they speak with poignant metaphors of mountains, wildlife and hard work as they cherish memories of their father.”
–Joan Cannon Borton, author of Deep in the Familiar and Drawing from the Women’s Well.
