Shortcut to Thief River Falls

By Shoshauna Shy

Shortcut to Thief River Falls is a clear-eyed and compassionate exploration of the ties that bind and what happens when they are severed by adoption, divorce, abandonment, or estrangement. In these wise, generous, and often funny poems, a protean "I" frequently records moments when a life starts to unravel, an irrevocable decision is made - or, conversely, when a character recognizes the blessing of a deep bond to a partner or child. While the longing for human connection is everywhere in this book, its intermingling of persona poems with personal lyric blurs the boundary between self and other, connecting all the speakers in a capacious imagined community that is its own form of healing.

-Catherine Jagoe, author, Praying to the God of Small Things and Bloodroot

Shoshauna Shy's poems come in a turtle-tough shell with a soft soul inside. From the stony mysteries of adoption to the peachy flesh of romantic connection (with its tooth-breaking pit), like the folks at her imaginary poetry recital, you'll feel "those sweet little throat-clucks / the audience makes as they resonate / with the final line."

-Joe Cottonwood, unlicensed poet

Genealogy has become an industry where technology and science revolutionize what we uncover about a shared past. In this affecting, wide-ranging poetry collection, Shoshauna Shy mines the emotional terrain DNA results can't touch - the ache for both connection and disjuncture, and the meaning of belonging and abandonment among children, lovers, mothers and fathers, both biological and adoptive.

-Ronnie Hess, past President, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and former Chair, Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GW2WJH4H
• ISBN13: 9798901467015
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Kelsay Books
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"