Rock Candy

Truth-telling with a homespun accent, these poems reflect the poet’s raising in a logging town in Washington state. Beneath the sweetness of some language is a sense of threat, endangered sexuality, and the need to create a makeshift existence to keep promise and courage alive. Jenifer Rae Vernon won the Tillie Olsen Award from the Working Class Studies Association for the book, and this first book of poems was selected for reading on “Writer’s Almanac” one week after publication.