A young girl with a mystical bend explores the vast arrangement of the stars. She looks toward the heavens for angels, a sense of her own destiny. She becomes a cartographer of sorts, shaping constellations of her own, mapping the sky with words. We were not yet twenty when we met, and though much time has past, I can still picture us. She with her cropped hair and boatneck shirt and myself in school-girl black, reveling in literature, fashion, and rock n' roll. We shared our evolving hopes and the thrust of personal wounds, buoying one another in hard times, staying close as she navigated the dark wake of the unexpected loss of her mother.--from the Foreword by Patti Smith