"These poems inhabit a world of permeable barriers where transformations readily occur between men and women, humans and animals, the living and the dead. Hers is a world where the real and the mythical rub shoulders, where people know abou the magical properties of plants, where anything can happen, where "everything that breathes will howl". She writes of the complexity of family ties, of motherhood that is both tender and fearsome, of an intimacy with the natural world which is torn between fears for its fragility and belief in its resilience."

Vashti believes that she cannot draw, but her art teacher's encouragement leads her to change her mind and she goes on to encourage another student who feels the same as she had.