A river swollen and drained by tides, a dauntless heart pumping time, forms the center of How My Father Became a Boat. The collection begins in the last days of the speaker's father before fanning out like the teeming deltas of its poems. Join the speaker: boating in coastal waters, traveling backroads to and from the river, and mining the dictionary for comfort. Explore the Gulf South as setting and lens on a journey from loss to hope.

In addition to interrogating how place contributes to identity, How My Father Became a Boat examines the nature of grief. Poems speak to the speaker's individual loss as well as to the collective grief of recognizing America's frailties. Personal recollection and history mix like salt and fresh water in these pages. The resulting brackish water poems highlight the forces that drive us to cultivate hope for futures we cannot know.