Lesley-Anne Evans brings her fierce and tender sensibilities to an intimate conversation with her mother, after a debilitating stroke leads to her sudden death.

Although the mother’s unexpected illness and death means a healing conversation will never occur, the daughter is compelled to speak, even if that requires imagining her mother’s presence and braving the most vulnerable disclosures of all.

In this book, domestic objects are metaphors and symbols: a brooch is an icon; green threads backstitch a life; and thoughts are folded fabric. We’ll Not Soon Forget About This explores the relational complexities of one mother and daughter, and the common experience of many women who want more, and pursue more, than their mothers can give. Never veering from straight talk about difficult truths, the poems compassionately accompany the reader through pain and loss in search of open spaces where consolation is possible.

Lesley-Anne Evans courageously examines her complicated mother daughter relationship alongside grief and uncovers beauty, mercy, and how death can be both ending and beginning. We’ll Not Soon Forget About This is a guidebook to the experiences of familial love and mortality.