Allison Adelle Hedge Coke descends from moundbuilders and is of Cherokee, Huron, Creek, French Canadian, Lorraine, Portuguese, English, Scot, and Irish ascendants. Raised in North Carolina, the Plains and Canada, she previously worked horses, fields, waters, and factories. The MacDowell Colony/Black Earth Institute Fellow; professor, Institute of American Indian Arts (summer faculty, Naropa University); previously authored Dog Road Woman (American Book Award), Off-Season City Pipe (poetry, Coffee House Press); and Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer (memoir, U.NE.).

This volume testifies to the need to protect the remarkable ruins of the Indigenous North American city of Blood Run and the sacred remains she guards there in mounded tombs. The persona poems herein emanate its character embraced in architectural accomplishment designed in accordance with the sun and moon and multitudes of stars above.