Published when Connelly was 21, this book won the Pat Lowther Award in 1991 for best poetry book of the year by a Canadian woman. Connelly wrote many of these poems when she was in her middle and late teens, but far from being juvenilia, they are fully accomplished works of art, by turns austere, brutal and joyous. Charting a course through a childhood and adolescence marked by violence and suicide, the poet emerges into the unexpected and dazzling beauty of Southeast Asia and northern Spain. The collection as a whole becomes a travelogue of spirit, as a young woman steps gratefully into the world and into her own life even as she explores the shadows of the past. (From karenconnelly.ca)