Many of Ellie O’Leary’s poems in her book, Breathe Here, are profound. They take you from childhood to old age, and many are about family. I just could not stop reading.
Published by North Country Press, this book of poems is very very special, and so very real, from tragedy to endurance and survival. Ellie grew up in Freedom, Maine, where her mom died when Ellie was a child. And she missed her mom for the rest of her life. These poems are all about Ellie’s life.
But please don’t think all the poems are about life’s losses and challenges, including a divorce and breast cancer. Because there’s plenty of beauty, grace, and gratitude in her poems.
This is a very special book, and one which I shall treasure and pull down off the shelf often to read some of Ellie’s poems.
As Gary Lawless writes on the back of the book: I can hear Ellie telling her truth, but now “living now, in grace and gratitude.” We should be grateful to have these stories, well told, in truth and grace.
That’s so true, Gary, so true.