Russian Tortoise

The poems in Gardner McFall's second volume address questions of death, faith, and love. As in her first book, The Pilot's Daughter, McFall investigates and responds to the natural world with her finely tuned senses. Her deepened sense of time and mortality is reflected in the poems about her mother s death, her journey to Vietnam forty years after her father's service there, and her exploration of love and family. Russian Tortoise celebrates beauty and mystery, whether in an Audubon plate, a tortoise her daughter brings home from school, or a man shouting "Alleluia" on the street.