The essays in The In-Between State forward a compassionate analysis of bodies: queer bodies, bodies of water, bodies that are hated, and bodies that deserve love. Martha Lundin, in fifteen moving essays, attempts to understand the ways in which people try to shape landscapes-how this can be a violent act, even as it seeks to be loving in some ways, and that this violence is not so different from the ways in which queer people shape their bodies to fit in or live outside of a norm.

With essays both personal and progressive, The In-Between State forms a love letter to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and, ultimately, a love letter to Lundin's queer body and queer bodies across the United States.