A powerful diptych juxtaposing our rootedness in family love with a report from the precipice of planetary disintegration.

Sue Goyette’s outskirts is a tour de force. Its originality lies in Goyette’s refusal of despair, her conviction that the connections among people, their conversation, curiosity, empathy and awe, can help us see a way forward. Her aim is to find energy in human love, a way to walk the darkness rather than hide from it. This book will name you, and frighten you; make you laugh, and arm you for what is to come.

… Leave the gossip to the rivers. Photographs will be buried at the base of diseased trees. All eyes are distractible, smiles are especially alluring. The sump-pump

can’t get rid of the water and god, I am told, is a canoe-shaped hole in all of us. Books, those old grandmothers, are losing their teeth. Stay focused. Those aren’t stars, they’re

flashlights. Add, don’t divide. Love best those who have forgotten how. There are no favorites in this dark. Now scatter.

— from “Resist”