Wilkins' poems are savage and beautiful, full of hard-won lives and a
godawful tenderness. In this book Manifest Destiny is more than
political rhetoric--it's a call to find the limits of survival. It has
dust-stunned men, hardscrabble women, and a patient devil, sharpening
his teeth.--Traci Brimhall
For Wilkins, the American West is no theme park or romantic diorama. He
offers an earnest glimpse into past and present landscapes that are real
and imagined, mourned and celebrated and witnessed--for these are human
landscapes.--Michael McGriff
Joe Wilkins is the author of The Mountain and the Fathers and
Killing the Murnion Dogs.