William Orem - Böcker

In this debut poetry collection by an award-winning fiction writer, the longing for God and the poignancy of family life echo each other’s music. The traditional forms of sonnet, sestina, and villanelle punctuate more modern verse forms, this combination being only one of the strands binding past and present. Many of these poems may be read as confessions—of joy, of hurtfulness given or received, of awe at the inescapable reality of love. This volume comprises spiritual writing that remains firmly of this world, part apostasy, part song, reaching out for meaning from both the shifting landscape of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and the interior places of the heart.

Set over the course of one winter at a hospital in Washington, "Across the River" is a linked series of stories about the trials of the body and their meaning for the spirit. From the psychology of brain surgeons, to a suicide who has time to regret his act, to a college student's first encounter with blood, "Across the River" brings together separate voices telling the common tale of how thinking beings encounter their own mortality.