These lyrical poems map the reconstruction of one woman's life after her exodus from a twenty year marriage. Pelman takes this all-too common sorrow and places it in the natural world as if only the junco, mouse, cricket and robin can understand, and “not drown everything (she wants) to tell” in easy platitudes. The imagistic quality of the poems allow the profound to emerge from the seemingly simple: “one tomato plant that grows a garden.” The themes of the poems reflect her own turnings: from Victoria to London to Saltspring and back; from a life of Sadie married lady to a renewed creativity, from an intellectual humanism to a return to Jewish thought and tradition Knowing that “loss makes small things valuable,” the poems trace a conscious reconstruction of self: from a narrow place of limitations through a metaphorical desert, towards joy, the eventual promised land. In the process of creating and refining the poem itself, she has found a parallel healing of the spirit. “If words could build a world, like love / one stone would be enough.”

Barbara Pelman was born in Vancouver and has lived in Toronto, London England, and various towns in B.C. – from Blueberry Creek to Saltspring Island. She has taught in colleges, alternative schools, universities, and high schools. She has a daughter who is currently teaching in Japan. Aside from writing, Pelman plays flute (badly), sketches, and longs to return to her first love, dancing. She currently lives inVictoria and teaches English at Reynolds Secondary School.