he alphabet breathes and lives, even the ghost letters, the ancient runes still whispering and inviting us to listen closely to what we have lost but also to what remains. Infused with a love of language and of place, Woolfitt's lyrical meditations reckon with the complex inheritance of both--language that holds as much cruelty as wonder, the place of Appalachia that holds histories of resilience and stewardship as well as Cherokee internment camps and ecological disaster. The author draws us into the intimate spaces of a son's speech delay and the loss of beloved grandparents even as he draws us outward across time and space, yielding portraits of self-taught artists like Bessie Harvey and Howard Finster and natural histories of yucca and the great auk. These essays seek the beauty and justice that might be remade in our ruined places, and, in their seeking, become a form of prayer.