Summary: In this riveting collection of poems, Julie Cadwallader-Staub invites the reader to experience the exquisitely tender as well as brutally difficult realities of living with someone dying of cancer. Face to Face honestly and gracefully describes her journey through the darkness of death and into the light of healing.

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Comment: “Face to Face is full of what Julie Cadwallader-Staub calls ‘bright blasts of truth.’ These are quiet poems, but their force derives from a deep-seated clarity, an intelligent music that begins in the small songs of everyday life and expands. I found these poems remarkably alive. Each of them gathers an atmosphere peculiar to its emotional climate. Each of them is a small, sane song cast into the vast confusing silence.”
—Jay Parini, author of The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems

“While death hovers over this fine collection, life and love are the real subjects of Julie Cadwallader-Staub’s poems. Some are exquisitely sad, some surprisingly funny; all confront wrenching change with honesty and grace. The poet captures intimate truths of one family’s loss but also speaks to the many who seek meaning in well-chosen words.”
—Julie Salamon, author of Hospital and of Facing the Wind

“I read a lot of poetry, but rarely do I read poems so elegant in their simplicity, so profound in their humanity. I read many accounts of great love and great loss, but rarely do I see suffering explored as honestly and hopefully as it is here. The faith that shines through these poems—so powerfully that it renews the reader’s faith—is neither vague nor pious. It is bone-deep faith, a phrase that stands in paradoxical tension with the fact that bone cancer took Julie Cadwallader-Staub’s beloved Warren from her and their children, leading to this painful and redemptive journey in language and life.”
—Parker J. Palmer, author of A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, and of The Courage to Teach

Market: Cadwallader-Staub’s poetry should appeal to all people who care deeply about the natural world we share and those who seek meaning amid death.

Shelving: Poetry; Anabaptist-Mennonite literature; Personal experience—healing; faith; grief; BISAC: Poetry; RTM: 640 Poetry.

The Author: Julie Cadwallader-Staub lives near Burlington, Vermont, and currently serves as the Grants Director for the Burlington School District. Her poems have been published in several journals, featured on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” and included in anthologies. She was awarded a 2001 Vermont Council on the Arts grant. She and her husband, Warren, were married for 23 years until his death from multiple myeloma at age 49.

Publisher: Cascadia Publishing House LLC
Imprint: DreamSeeker Books
Copublisher: None
Publication date: June 2010
Approximate Pages: 96
Tentative Format: 5.5 x 8.5" trade paper
Prices: $12.95 US/Can. ISBN 13: 978-1-931038-52-2; ISBN 10: 1-931038-52-X