Böcker av Rebecca Watkins

Field Guide to Forgiveness delves into a shifting landscape of memories that centers on loss, love, regret, and ultimately acceptance. With clarity of language and stark imagery, each poem provides a glimpse into the courage it takes to heal the past. Although rooted in the deeply personal, these poems also explore the timely topics of school shootings, police brutality, and the pandemic. Vacillating from tender longing to unvarnished realism, Watkins' new chapbook provides a map for anyone ready to tackle their own hidden terrain.

Destined to set her southern hometown of Sweetbriar, Georgia ablaze, Vidalia Lawson returns eighteen years later amid rumors and past atrocities. "The sadness of her existence is that she has nothing but a failed attempt at a singing career, a run-down apartment in Los Angeles, a job as a stripper, and a strange son, who is ironically the only joy in her life." Journey with Vidalia as she travels back to Georgia for her grandmother's 100th birthday, only to face the past that has called her home. Vidalia's desire to leave as soon as she returns is as compelling as her need to look into the eyes of a mute man, who paints with splashes of color and plays a guitar in his lair above the hayloft of her grandmother's barn. Sweet Vidalia keeps the reader motivated with a strange need to see her win. This book will delight with every turn and twist.