Wyoming's southern corridor bears the wind-scoured footprints of those tenacious, hopeful few who've left their mark on the wild landscape and spirit of this great and beautiful state. In this collection of poems, historical essays, and photographs, Voices at Twilight author Lori Howe illuminates the past and present of towns such as Old Sherman, once the highest railroad village in the world and now inhabited only by the grave of a child, Centennial, a former gold-rush town, now home to a colorful, artistic population of 100, Piedmont, whose well-preserved remains include the...

In every season, life on America's high plains is at once harsh and beautiful, liberating and isolated, welcoming and unforgiving. The poems of Cloudshade take us through those seasons, swinging wide a glassless window to life in the West--to antelope flowing seamless over dirt roads, boom and bust ghost towns, deep, glacial lakes ringed with glowing aspen trees, ice fishing by the Northern Lights, and as in "High Plains Solstice," live music on summer nights that

carves hot petals
through our bodies
in its ritual of tides
and light;
licks us open
...