These poems chronicle the family's wrenching migration from a long-envelope culture of farms and mines to the city, where they are viewed by their urban neighbors as outsiders. Change informs this journey from a backwoods legacy of the mule-drawn plough to the hustle of an anonymous assembly line. McCormick, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, draws on childhood sensibilities to explore the powerful theme and to a language.This is her first book. of migration craft memory into a language.