Terry Ann Thaxton sifts through the images of a childhood half-buried among the pines and saw palmetto of her native Florida and unearths a child orphaned by abuse. In a home where "Southern Baptists exchange judgments," she hides among a tribe of siblings, roaming the woods and playing games that hold equal degrees of cruelty and love. At the first opportunity she flees - into the arms of more abuse, then, wildly, into years where "suitcases fell from the closet" and "she thinks of marching toward [the pond], / perhaps reaching a gray cloud, pulling the switch." And yet, somehow, "the sky offers its philanthropy all day." The genealogy of despair is also the genealogy of hope. In the search to clarify the past-and thus transform the present - these poems turn over the shards of memory like the colored glass in a kaleidoscope, looking for an angle that will light up the great mystery of how we become and continue becoming who we are.