The sixty four poems in this first collection from Saltspring Island writer Christine Smart are intimate and sensual, often profound yet always accessible. Some written in sensuous prose, others in a variety of rich image verse forms, they speak of desire, love and longing, life and death, the beauty and evanescence of the natural world closely observed. Don McKay hears "the sharp bitter-sweet tang of the authentic" in these poems that have "an earthy music all their own."

Christine Smart was born in 1953 in Shawville, Quebec. She graduated from Queen's University with a B.SC.N degree (1976) and holds a degree in Fine Arts, Writing (1997) from the University of Victoria. She lives on Saltspring Island where she is a community health nurse.