The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home
“Home is one of the great themes of literature, of human beings, of the animal kingdom altogether. Odysseus finds his way home to Penelope, and arctic terns fly thousands of miles to return to their nesting grounds. The main danger for authors exploring this primal subject is sentimentality; the writers anthologized here, however, remember that home is not only  our refuge and snug harbor but also a place where we get bored, abused, battered, and bent. It couldn't be more important: home often seems, indeed, 'the heart of all that is.' At the very least, it's a place where we can learn, in Susan Elbe's memorable phrase, 'to shoot this tin-can loneliness / off fence posts.' Farzana Marie points out that a poem is a kind of house, and it's true of the essays here, too. Come on in. Make yourself at home.”--Bart Sutter, author of The Reindeer CampsThe Minneapolis Tribune, November 3rd, 2013:"All lyrical, some whimsical, several dark and many hopeful, the almost 100 works included in “The Heart of All That Is” show the many and varied sides of “home,” which can both protect and imprison, contain amazement and abuse, and be as much a state as a place....Taken in small hunks or all at once, the works in “The Heart of All That Is” are readable, sincere, sometimes disturbing, but always engaging."Saint Paul Pioneer Press, November 3rd, 2013:"The heartwarming, sometimes disturbing and highly readable anthology is divided into sections in which the idea of home is approached in different ways: The Amber Wilds of Childhood, Folded Maps of the Past, Far and Away From Home, Looking Back at Home, Seeking Shelter, Where Rain Returns and the Contours of Private Geography."--Mary Ann Grossmann