From the acclaimed poet and writer, Zoë Brigley, comes a timely meditation on America. These creative nonfiction and craft essays cover the possibilities of girls and girlhood, motherhood, violence at home and abroad, violence against women, the consolation in writing, trauma, and redemption. Other topics covered include the writer’s English family, Halloween in America, and guns. The essays often use popular and literary culture as jumping off points: for example Alun Lewis’s love letters, the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, David Bowie, or John Burnside’s writings about his abusive father.