"If it's the beginning or the end, it doesn't matter as long as you tell it all." Frank, funny and poignant, Kate B Hall's new collection is a lifetime in the making. From her wartime beginnings as a 'difficult child' to the tentative joy of early great-grandmotherhood, the power in these poems shines through in the tension held between the tough and the tender. Finding no truth untouchable, Hall squares up to mortality, dementia and unloving mothers, yet almost always unearths a seedling of hope growing amongst the wreckage. Resilient and playful to the last, this is a book that loves hard, a long-awaited chronicle from a well-loved writer.