marybones by Pattie McCarthy

Excerpts | Order

"Pattie McCarthy's MARYBONES powerfully evokes—and invokes—the iconic, implacable mother-of-god Everywoman who is always slippping out of canonical reach. The rosary was once a handful of bones; it used to be flowers. In this gorgeous enunciation of annunciations, Mary touches the singular with the universal, an open signifier of unwritten and unmarried mothers. She is the S. S. Mary, the Santa Maria, a casualty of unknown forces, an early American, a boat full of immigrants, a survivor of hard labor. McCarthy lovingly draws all of her into the refuge of this amazing book." 

—Elizabeth Willis