crick to creek critter to creature until each string of phonemes stood up straight and alert." -Steven Deutsch, author of and Lisa McMonagle captures the spirit, the pride, and the sacrifices of women in Appalachia, especially one woman, her mother, who left a brutal marriage and retreated to family, entering "a kind of indentured servitude, a trade for shelter" to ensure her children's future. Women's roles, their stricture, their rebellions and small triumphs are captured here through images of clothes carried on "the crook of her hip where women carry babies and other burdens," and through a rebellious daughter who cross-stitches the forbidden word "ain't" on her requisite sampler. We meet her grandmother, proud and rigid, whose mealtime grace was to remind "that God provides food to fulfill His will on earth, not to please our palates." McMonagle also shows us the pleasures of childhood in her small mountain community-playing jacks and hopscotch, ice skating, chasing a hearse to the graveyard, going to the Firemen's Carnival-while not forgetting its prejudices and ignorance-a hyperactive cousin, whipped regularly with a belt by his father, and another cousin's death from AIDS, his mother claiming he died "from a bad cold." This wonderful collection reads like a novel, evoking the essence of time and place, told through women's lives. -Sarah Russell, author of