HALF MOON WAKING https://ift.tt/Fdng3YI
Hunziker’s writings, which include haiku, free verse, essays, and a few short stories, are centered on the theme of a woman’s passage through motherhood, from the pain and hope of pregnancy to bone-deep postpartum soreness and exhaustion, along with the helpless anxiety of vigils through her kids’ bouts with asthma and pneumonia, her pride as their minds awake to the world, miscellaneous vignettes (such as the desperate quest for a bathroom when she takes her toddlers on an outing near their snowy Minnesota home), and the plangent grief of a miscarriage. Hunziker explores other subjects as well: the hush of a deep snowfall, skittish girlhood encounters with boys, and a dayslong, rain-soaked trek over a mountain in West Papua, Indonesia, that teaches the narrator the strength of endurance without hope. Many of the essays explore her Christian faith in ardent, hymnlike prose: “In the broken, humble hearts, in the glass of water shared in Jesus’ name, within our souls when we invite Jesu...