In the Time of Sonic Booms

Readers can travel back to small-town America in the 1960's via the poems in this vivid collection. Many of the poems capture details about the people who inhabit one such community. These include, among others, the doctor's daughter, who people assumed "had it good;" the military kid who waited at the end of the driveway for his van to the Christian Boys Academy, and who had no friends; crazy Old Man Morner who lived in a shack at the edge of the creek; the narrator's father with his guns and his "disappointment of daughters;" and Uncle Fred, who lived years with only one lung. Her poems capture both the common violence and the unexpected tenderness of that time and place.