In the Alaska-based poems of Bone Willows, the wheel of the year
spins faster than in the Lower Forty-Eight: "Arctic spring bicycles down
a bookcase." And the frantic course of time affects everything from
non-human nature to the ways a couple with a small child make their way
in the world. Here, animals "glow with no light," friends remind each
other that "it will break again, the push will come and it will all
break again," and home is "a secret held against hard dark." In this
debut collection, James Engelhardt gives readers the hidden Alaska--not
of glaciers and brown bears and tourist stops--but of expressways and
families and dinner parties.