All the Lands We Inherit

A searing, heartbreaking, and formally inventive debut that is at once a memory and a lament, a deeply personal journey to find the truth-- and herself-- that takes her through the hostile terrain of her mother's difficult decline. Price attempts to help her mother in the wake of a serious accident and diagnosis, two seismic events that are at once a culmination of many years of self-neglect and a catalyst for the author's search for answers. Where did it all go wrong? How did her mother go from being lively and confident to self-isolated, recalcitrant, and self-destructive? As the lyric vignettes weave back and forth through time, they investigate the ways that matrilineal legacy have shaped her mother, and how that shaping comes to bear on the poet herself. And so the past becomes at once a backdrop and an active force, a thing that underlies everything that happens in the present day. From survival to substance abuse to born again Christianity, the materials of her matriarchs' lives inform, if not preordain, the realities of her own life. Ultimately, All the Lands We Inherit asks: How much do we owe to those who came before us? And how much of ourselves do we own?