This volume finishes out a year of poetry writing that began as an attempt to deal with serious illness and recovery. Like the three earlier books in what has become a series, "Autumn Opens a Door" is the result of an intensive set of sessions in which Claudia McGill wrote quickly and intuitively, not stopping to edit, just letting the thoughts flow. Over the following weeks, she then took time to revise and review the poems that emerged, but not too much time, wanting to hold on to the freshness they had when first written. She used the writing experience to make sense of the everyday world around her as well as her interior world. All of these poems were written in mid-autumn, a time traditionally thought of as one of loss and endings. In this book, it becomes both: autumn marks a beginning, a step into the future away from the illness and despair of the past several years, as well as being a time of reflection, a time to examine and to let go of these troubles.