Catherine Abbey Hodges' In a Rind of Light takes us into the territory of memory, where "in a distant city," someone falls down stairs and makes "a song of it," where siblings speak of family secrets that make breathing different, where selflessness is the mother's gift to her children. These poems are close and personal, affectionate. Certainly, there is sadness in this work, loss, and dwelling upon loss. However, in these "prayers into the past," mistakes being the pathways to how we find our lives, Hodges makes "even the poorest thing" shine.