In 1875, a young couple weds and sets off in a covered wagon for a homestead in California. The story of Miles and Phoebe’s first year—planting, building, surviving, and getting to know one another—is told through interconnected poems. They are quiet and introspective, poems about caring for livestock, making jam, chopping wood, building barns, darning socks, and hauling water, but also about breathing and loving and appreciating the beauty beyond their front door. In spare and beautiful language, Fisk conveys the hardships and precariousness of pioneer life as ably as she does the breathlessness and wide-eyed wonder of young love.