The many meanings of “economy” are the ground for the mediation and lament of Ledger, Susan Wheeler’s fourth book. In its Greek origins, economy referred to the stewardship of a household and, as it developed, the word also came to include aspects of government and of religious faith. Ledger places an individual’s crisis of spirituality and personal stewardship, or management of her resources, against a backdrop of a culture that has focused its “economy” on financial gain and has misspent its own tangible and intangible resources.

Susan Wheeler is the author of the poetry collections Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, which received the Norma Farber First Book Award of the Poetry Society of America and was short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Award; Smokes, which won the Four Way Books Award in 1998; and Source Codes. A novel, Record Palace, will be published by Graywolf Press in May 2005. Her work has appeared in seven editions of the Scribner anthology Best American Poetry as well as in the Paris Review, London Review of Books, Verse, Talisman, the New Yorker, and many other journals. On the creative writing faculties at Princeton University and the New School's graduate program, she lives in Rocky Hill, New Jersey.