As people live longer, we face the challenges that come with caring for, and living as, an aging population. This collection focuses on the sad, funny, mundane reality of life in a nursing home. In her own words, Janice N. Harrington worked her way through college as a nurses' aide and wrote The Hands of Strangers because she "cannot forget the 'girls' I worked with or the 'residents' under my care. I haven't forgotten what I saw, heard, felt, or learned."

Janic N. Harrington's debut Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone earned teh 2007 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, and an NEA fellowship for poetry.