Summary (also available by PDF flier): This collection of poems grapples with the collision between spirit and nature, violence and peace, memory and memory loss, and the legacy of mothers and grandmothers. What do we carry with us when we leave? What do we pass down to the next generation? How is spirit made incarnate in the broken world that surrounds us?

The heron keeps its perch nearly every morning on a limb in Wolf Creek. The drive is long and mundane, the daily tragedies and griefs mercifully interrupted by sacred moments where nature intercedes on our behalf to remind us of what is holy and what merely passes away.

The poems in Between the Heron and the Moss strive to capture these glimpses, to magnify the Spirit’s incarnation in the natural world in contrast with the losses we all suffer. There is growth to be gained through suffering and beauty to be made out of ashes. The Spirit moves between and within the heron and the moss.

“Between the Heron and the Moss is a modern spiritual woman’s rendering of the natural world that Hopkin’s poetry embraces: a world so infused by the spirit and grandeur of God that even the silhouette of a heron on a stick, the waxen leaf of a mayapple, or the seeds of sugar snap peas bear brilliant bursts of light, joy and redemption to those who seek to see. Wells beautifully melds the secular and the non-secular, the divine and the human, as she explores what tethers and frees the questing heart.” —Kathryn Winograd, Author, Slow Arrow: Unearthing the Frail Children

“From gun violence, miscarriage, and memory loss, to ‘popping stars like bubble wrap’ and receiving a kiss from a misbehaved dog, Between the Heron and the Moss abounds with surprises that lift and break the heart. Wells draws upon the richness of family history, scripture, and the natural world to offer up poems that ‘catch the sun,’ sprout vines, and wind themselves around her fingers, cultivated, loved, and offered up as a gift to us.“
—Tania Runyan, Author, Second Sky and What Will Soon Take Place

“Sarah Wells' poetry springs from necessity; to embrace the spirit, to praise; the emotion is true, whether she is writing about nature or the personal. Her distilled poetry is welcomed in this uncertain time.”— Michael Miller, Author, Entering the Day

Market: Anyone interested in poetry that, as Wells’ poem, “Another Day on Action Drive” puts it, invites us ”to shape the burning bushes by the drive.”

Shelving: Poetry; Anabaptist-Mennonite literature. BISAC: Poetry; RTM: 640 Poetry

The Author: Sarah M. Wells is the author of The Family Bible Devotional, Pruning Burning Bushes, The Valley of Achor, and Acquiesce. Six of her essays have been listed as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays. She is a 2018 recipient of an Ohio Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University. Wells serves as the Director of Content Marketing in Ashland, Ohio, where she resides with her husband and their three children.

Quote: “What more can be done, / here. What more but prune back the grapevine, / transplant bee balm, recruit the grandson’s wife / to shape the burning bushes by the drive. / It’s what she has to do.” —Sarah M. Wells, excerpted from the poem “Another Day on Action Drive”

Publisher: Cascadia Publishing House LLC
Imprint: DreamSeeker Books
Copublisher: None
Publication date: December 2020
Approximate Pages: 90
Tentative Format: 5.5 x 8.5" trade paper
Prices: $13.95 US/Can. ISBN 13: 978-1-68027-017-4  ISBN 13: 1-68027-017-6