In Galaxie Wagon, Darnell Arnoult navigates the territory of middle age to find humor, heartbreak, and wisdom in a phase of life where the body begins to betray itself, yet romance is still possible and childhood dreams are still attainable. Deceptively simple yet carefully crafted, these engaging poems teach us how memory and attention point us toward our future and grapple with the great paradox: the undeniable knowledge of the finite and an indefatigable belief in the infinite.

Set against the backdrop of two neighboring Southern towns, "Sufficient Grace" is the powerful, affecting story of two families over the course of a year, from one Easter season to the next. One quiet spring day, Gracie Hollaman hears voices in her head that tell her to get in her car and leave her entire life behind -- her home, her husband, her daughter, her very identity. Gracie's subsequent journey releases her genius for painting and effects profound changes in the lives of everyone around her.
A spellbinding work, "Sufficient Grace" explores the power of personal transformation and redemption, and the many ordinary and extraordinary ways they come to pass through faith, love, motherhood, art, even food. This poignant, poetic study of the human condition affirms the enduring importance of relationships and the strength we derive from them, even though we sometimes have to leave behind an old identity in order to discover our soul.
Beautifully paced, filled with unforgettable characters, "Sufficient Grace" reveals the vital place that spirit and belonging have in every inner life -- and in the everyday world.

With a storyteller's timing and the emotional range of a singer, Darnell Arnoult in her debut collection offers readers a stirring string of poems about the people of Fieldale, Virginia. A planned community founded in the Virginia foothills by Marshall Fields in the early 1900s to support his textile mill, Fieldale was populated by transplanted Appalachian mountain folk. Arnoult herself grew up there, a third-generation resident and among the first generation to go to college. She took away with her the oral history of her home, and in What Travels With Us she captures in poetic form the townspeople's voices, both remembered and imagined. Personal, poignant, and witty, Arnoult's poems look back as they move forward, demonstrating how we are always creating ourselves anew from the experiences we carry with us.

Pearly Rakes complained
that on long winter nights
Gracie and Charlie
kept the parlor lamp
burning too long,
burning up her kerosene.

Pearly claimed
she courted and married
the same man twice
and never burned up
nearly so much.

Charlie scratched his head.
Told Pearly,
You musta done most of
your courting in the dark.
-- from "Boarding House"