Infused with intimacy, Hewn pieces together a life in Northern California: a girl with scoliosis raised in a small ranger's house on the top of Mount Tamalpais, becoming a wife and mother in Oakland, and her family, five generations deep, settling in the Central Valley. Crossing time and experience, Hewn spotlights ordinary women, their undervalued caregiving and unpaid work shouldered across generations, suddenly illuminated. Navigating readers through the darker corners of deformity, relationships, nature and place, Heather Angier crafts spare, image rich poems that are accessible, innovative and immediate. Based on personal experiences, fairytales and family stories passed down, Hewn attests: the public can gain only with reference to the private.