Filled with awe at the improbable, incomprehensible trajectory of human experience, Renate Wood ponders history, memory, and family. Beginning with the sequence titled "German Chronicle," Wood evokes her childhood in Germany during the WWII, recording the war's impact on the world in general and on her family in particular. Her poems move between the past and the present, from family life to mythology, and are distinguished by intellectual and emotional courage, metaphoric surprise, and linguistic clarity.

"With a classical restraint and a lyrical fluency, her clear-eyed, compassionate poetry befriends the heart in a pitiless world." —Eleanor Wilner

"Wood's sensitive, frequently autobiographical second book looks back in longing and pain to a childhood in World War II-era Germany, then pulls its readers slowly into an American present dominated by elegy." —Publishers Weekly

"German-born Renate Wood works as an alchemist, commuting sharp, ice-cold autobiographical material into the gold of revelation." —Baltimore City Paper

"A moving selection of moments riddled with life's ironies." —Kirkus Reviews