YOU WANT A STORY OF PROGRESS, BUT IT'S FALL. In her fourth collection, celebrated poet and author Megan Merchant uses the natural world as her canvas, mapping the abstract shape of the American social consciousness onto a wintry landscape of marriage, motherhood, and grief. Suffused with autumnal decay and the silent promise of snow, Merchant's collection serves as a powerful distillation of the ageless themes of memory and loss.