-Sarah Frances Moran’s Evergreen is a heart-wrenching requiem shouted from the bottom of a barren ravine, for the young girl who lost herself under the heavy drunken hands of an abusive step-father, but it is also the chanting song of a strong woman bellowing from a mountaintop, fighting to regain her life and reclaim her own body. In her poem “The Difference,” Moran tackles the double standard status quo of blaming and shaming sexually victimized women when she says so clearly, “But I think it’s our inherent societal issue / that we focus on adjusting the thoughts and feelings of girls and women / without focusing on adjusting how boys and men direct their desires. / He didn’t / and that’s the difference.”

If you ever wanted to peek inside the mind of a poet moving through the process of healing from internalized distress and anger, this book is the heavy ticket inside and through.

-Kai Coggin, Author of Periscope Heart and Wingspan

-In Sarah Frances Moran’s Evergreen beauty and survival duke it out on a surrealistic forest plateau. Like humans, the evergreen is sturdy and overcomes trauma to stand tall. Moran writes “I am waiting to stop waiting on healing...Hoping that if a hero shows up to hold out a hand, she’ll find more than a skeleton.” There is a musicality throughout this collection. In “This Evergreen’s Locking up Everyone Who Ever Laid a Finger on Me,” the phrase is repeated: “I rely on you.” I rely on you. I rely on you,” almost like chanting this mantra will make it true. These poems are vulnerability and beauty on the page: a way to heal after that first cut went too deep.

-Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Author of Your Best Asset is a White Lace Dress