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In the history of the University of Houston creative writing program, there is perhaps no professor more revered than poet Edward Hirsch. Hirsch, now 70, was born in Chicago and came to Houston when he was 35 years old, half a lifetime ago. He arrived in 1985 from Detroit, where he’d been teaching at Wayne State University, and stayed for 17 years, until he was appointed president of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in New York in 2002. “Houston was a good fit for me,” says Hirsch by phone from New York. “What you have in New York is an established cultural life. But in Houston, there is an eagerness and urge to create. This makes it an oddly good city for poetry.”  

Cathy and Gloria have been friends since childhood. Even after Cathy’s family moved to another city, she and Gloria, both deeply religious, stayed in touch the way most teenagers did back in the day, by running up long-distance phone bills. Years later, each with a family of her own, they are stunned to discover their fathers, both deceased, also stayed in touch — but in secret, writing letters sent to post office boxes. Cathy’s dad, Cary, saved these letters for her, which reveal he and Gloria’s father John were deeply in love.