This unique book intertwines poetry and biographies -- the main biography, of course, being that of Vincent Van Gogh. But as we follow Van Gogh from his childhood, to his time as a preacher to coal miners, to his ecstatic periods of creation and final madness, we discern another parallel life: that of the author. And this life, too. looms largely as we follow Ralph Hammond as a young World War II correspondent in the European theater pondering the rubble of a blasted house where Van Gogh's lived, then as a nostalgic visitor fifty years later tracking Van Gogh's life and painting throughout contemporary Europe. The union of the two lives, the reader will surely discover, offers quite a poignant journey.