Blue Peninsula, its author Madge McKeithen says, "is not about resolution, but about connection." McKeithen turns to poetry to make some kind of sense of the chaos that has engulfed her world since her son Ike was diagnosed with a degenerative, but unnamed, illness nine years ago. The poems include favorites that I too might have chosen--Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider" and Rilke's "Sunset"--as well as surprising choices that taught me deeper ways to think about the griefs and complexities of life--poems, for example, by Alan Michael Parker, Kenneth Koch, and Carl Phillips. One of the most moving, especially in the context of Ike's illness, is Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art."

But it's not just the poetry. It's McKeithen's honesty, her skill as a writer, and her determination to tell the story that had to be told--that's what makes this a book I couldn't put down until I read it all the way through.

In this amazing book, Madge McKeithen not only uses the poetry she loves for her own comfort, but to help inform her own understanding of a life that has broken off from the one she intended to live. Her son, Ike, is ill. No one knows what to call the illness, no one can predict its duration nor offer treatment. A mother alone in the wilderness of emotions and yet stuck in the daily grind of obligations, work, and relationships in the face of the dreadful, terrifying illness of her child.

McKeithen's book is astounding and courageous, beautiful and fresh.