compulsory religious instruction and practice

Through traditional native tales

sustaining humor and spiritual visitations

we have much to learn from each other — if only we have the heart to listen

This is the novel we've all been waiting for

In the Hands of the River Upper Skagit compulsory religious instruction and practiceWhat can we do but seek nectar where it blooms, whispers the porous and questioning speaker of In the Hands of the River. With delicate precision, In the Hands of the River subverts traditional poetic forms to show how a childhood for a queer boy of both Cherokee and European heritage happens within and outside dominant narratives of Appalachia. This debut collection weaves ancestral and personal threads of trauma, reclamation, and survival into a