Roy Miki’s first poetry collection is an arresting, cleanly conceived series of meditations on the ties of family and place witnessed from his own place as a third-generation Japanese-Canadian. These exquisitely balanced poems trace the fragility of ancestral bonds. The drama of Roy’s life–his family, politics, community, his unswerving passion for justice–is transformed here into burning coals that glow through the long, cold night. –Joy Kogawa, author of Obasan