Frank pays affecting tribute to the lives of her mother and sister, both now gone, through the lens of place. And as the essay ends, she recalls visiting this same town years ago with her sister, before this present trip.

It’s lyrical, textured, natural, and unexpected. While the form these essays take are varied in content and style—some are thick and fibrous while others are delicate, unicolored strands that focus on one small aspect of grief—together they make for a rich, textured collection. And yet, from the very first essay, the reader has the foreboding sense that lives and hopes, like St. Germain’s yarns, can unravel at any moment. 

Over the course of ten essays, Rember delivers a withering, if darkly humorous, diagnosis of a society on its last breaths: “We have become a depressingly aged and unfulfilled civilization. . . .  Where once we were full of promise and lust for life, we are now sticking to the known and the comfortable. In financial terms, we’re living on interest rather than producing. In agricultural terms, we’re eating the seed corn. In ecological terms, we’re parasitic.”

If one remains open during the excavation process, it is possible to dredge up unexpected, sometimes unwelcome, truths and thus reveal how one’s past has been woven out of assumptions, the narratives of others, and a collective story told to cloak uncomfortable realities.

The softness with which Renkl delivers the atrocities of life makes the joys of life shine that much brighter.

Central to the current crisis is a sense of instability and fragmentation inaugurated by mass mobility.

Take a moment to consider the word “hearth.” Does it make you think of the heart of a home? Does it conjure up some primal memory of community, a fire around which long ago ancestors sat, broke bread together, and shared stories?