The Rented Altar

By Lauren Berry

Lauren Berry's stunning second collection follows a young bride through the maze of a Floridian suburb. As her husband's second wife, she enters stepmotherhood unprepared for its storybook tradition of distrust, a pain intensified by her discovery that she is unable to conceive a child of her own. Each failed attempt to create life is a stone thrown into a pond, rippling her every surface. She loses her stepson in neighborhood gardens, obsesses over a bar of soap left by the previous wife, and plants lingerie in her bathroom as handymen remodel her vanity. The Rented Altar presents a haunting series of surrealist narratives, and the poems sing darkly of one woman's inability to steady herself in her new domestic kingdom.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1949540146
• ISBN13: 9781949540147
• Release Date: October 2020
• Publisher: C&r Press
• Length: 82 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"