When It Came Time

Jeri McCormick was born in the Kentucky Appalachians and grew up in Cincinnati, where her family moved to escape the mountain depression. These poems chronicle the family's wrenching migration from a long-evolved culture of farms and mines to the city, where they are viewed by their urban neighbors as outsiders. Change informs this journey from a backwoods legacy of the mule-drawn plough to the hustle of an anonymous assembly line. McCormick, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, draws on childhood sensibilities to explore the powerful theme of migration and to craft memory into a language. This is her first book.