The Bodies of Birds by Thon, Melanie Rae NEUF collection

Resurrected and restored through the bodies of multitudes, a young woman who becomes an organ donor after a car accident radiates unmitigated love as she comes to know the recipients of her heart and kidneys--lungs, bowel, vertebrae, corneas . . . Twenty-seven years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, black storks glide over the Zone of Alienation. Apple trees bloom; lilacs flower--radioactive wolves thrive; bees make glowing honey . . . A prisoner in California, a man who killed a woman a hundred times, who stabbed face and throat, heart and belly, now washes another man in the shower, shaves his face, changes his diapers, protects and serves a murderer like himself, riddled by dementia . . .

Prayers, love songs, laments, confessions--these three provocative immersions through and beyond the body explore the revelatory expansiveness of consciousness and compassion; the persistence of love; the trauma of intimate violence and environmental devastation; unexpected grace; and the remarkable resilience of the marvelously diverse more-than-human world.