Judy Lorenzen’s collection of poems is a compelling effort at a wonderfully impossible task: bringing back, through words, the best features of our parents. This heartfelt collection reaches across time and memory to offer us resonant portraits of two very interesting people.  Her mother and father, certainly.  But more than that. The couple exemplifies crucial aspects of our Midwestern life: she, a rural Nebraska woman steeped in nature, family, and faith; he, a second-generation Greek immigrant, adopting country music alongside a hard-work ethic, mixed with Greek cuisine. Lorenzen’s poems reach after generational love, the question of “what is love anyway” when we try to imagine our elder’s lives with empathy and awe. These poems teach us about heritage, home, and community–three mainstream place-conscious concepts that guided Lorenzen’s career as an educator, and now center her poems.
 

Robert E. Brooke, Emeritus Professor of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln