All the Lands We Inherit, Darby Price's debut, is a lyric memoir about her mother's hardships. Equal parts love song and lament, this touching hybrid work of prose poems, set in post-Hurricane Katrina Louisiana, illuminates the difficulty of caring for someone who resists intervention and attributes the vicissitudes of fortune to spiritual forces.
"Everything I've done has just been to keep her alive. I will--I must--fail. Before then, I do as much as I can," Price vows. "Fill out applications for Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, free meals, free rides. We turn out our pockets and find faith struggling among the lint." A car crash landed her mother in the hospital, where she had to confront long-neglected medical conditions. Price and her siblings encouraged her to quit smoking and pursue necessary treatment for her lungs. However, she remained addicted to cigarettes and her health continued to deteriorate. A history of insecure employment left her in a precarious financial situation, with unaddressed trauma as well. Price felt "the years stretch out behind and before me, full of shame and terror" and wished "to lay this burden down."
Price's prose poems are in abecedarian trios--three each for most letters of the alphabet, totaling 66. A concluding note reveals that this complex structure is modeled on a specific chapter of the Bible: Lamentations 3. Throughout, the language is saturated with allusions to scripture and hymns, apt given her mother's piety. Through alliteration, salient details, and piercing fragments of memory, Price captures a "low-simmering," anticipatory grief. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck