That heaviest weight of all to bear, Inalienable weight of care.
Death runs apace.
Yet One there is can curb myself, Can roll the strangling load from me Break off the yoke and set me free. A woman whose life comes to be defined by her association with a black itinerant water diviner, Tyrell Thompson. One of the magical things about Joyce Carol Oates's talent is her enduring ability to reinvent not only the psychological space she inhabits when writing, but herself as well, as part of her own fiction. She is one of the most talented and versatile writers of our time. This brilliant and mysterious work is the first in a series of fictions in imaginative collaboration with works of art planned by The Ecco Press.