.,."in these poems, (there is) a family of 12 with the mother, father, and speaker as the prime characters....In a brilliant crown of sonnets, its most important character, the speaker's brother, who died a suicide, by drowning, fully emerges. The strictness of the form is never obtrusive--it just does its job...to give a frame, a tension, something for the powerful emotion to work off of or against, thus increasing its powerful sentiment...By writing this book...Teresa Carson has rescued her family and her brother. That a book of poems can do this is a miracle." --Thomas Lux
"These poems...convey with beauty and power the emotions that pour from loss, love, trauma, reconciliation and healing. It is difficult in an academic article or a clinical process to capture the full measure of what it is we seek to heal. But in these powerful poems...one can connect to a fragment of the pain, and hope, of Teresa Carson. Her words can teach. Teresa Carson is wise. She shares her wisdom in this remarkable book."
--Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. Senior Fellow, The Child Trauma Academy

Cat hoarding. Panic attacks. Rigid perfectionism. Carson reconstructs, through a hybrid of received and invented poetic forms, the literal and metaphorical experience of the psychological homesickness that controlled her life until she confronted it in therapy, and thereby opened herself to making a true home with her second husband.