"There is no store-bought redemption pasted to the ends of these poems, but neither will you find hopelessness, self-pity, a turning away from the world. What you will find at the core of all these poems is the timeless North Carolinian's beneficent but ungilded witnessing." - From the Introduction by Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, co-author of True Compass and Flags of Our Fathers