The story of a woman simultaneously sustained and stifled by her affair, this book invites readers to ask how we come to be who we are and what it is exactly that we believe about ourselves. Skaggs investigates the heartbreaks we witness, the experiences we take into ourselves, and those we internalize through the pretense of avoidance. This book will leave readers feeling stronger and more capable.
 

Alberta Skaggs earned an MFA in creative writing in 2001 from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, with Kent Haruf as the thesis director for her novel Vy’s Place. In 2005, she won Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s top teaching honor for term faculty. She wrote the biography Crossing the Mekong (a combination of poetry and prose) for and with Chan Sang San. It was published in 2017 by Saluki Publishing.
 

“Sad and rich and full and complex and lyrical and insightful and very much it says what it is to be alive and out there open. It seems fearless to me. Skaggs has gone way out on the limb here. It’s revealing without any attempt to withhold anything. No filter. No safe landing. No net. The writing is lovely. Skaggs has decided to go at this story, these people, by accumulation and circling, not by linear means. The result is a sense of story, of these people, as in a dream. We don’t know them as well externally, logically. Instead, we see into their inner selves, sort of as seen through smoke or gauze, but deep.”—Kent Haruf, author of Our Souls at Night and Plainsong

“The outside table on the book’s cover seems like some unexpected thing you might come upon while going about your life, like the affair itself and the way it evolves in the book.”—Georgia Wessel, author of River Bells

“I love the title.”—Mary Stepp Wallen, “Daybreak,” Yemassee 2005; Sail on Silver Girl