Winter begins with the shortest day of the year before nightfall. As in her companion volume, SUMMER SOLSTICE, Nina MacLaughlin meditates on both the dark and the light and what this season means in our lives. “Winter tells us,” she says, “more than petaled spring, or hot-grassed summer, or fall with its yellow leaves, that we are mortal. In the frankness of its cold, in the mystery of its deep-blue dark, the place in us that knows of death is tickled, focused, stoked. The angels sing on the doorknobs and others sing from the abyss. The sun has been in retreat since June, and the heat inside glows brighter in proportion to its absence. We make up for the lost light in the spark that burns inside us.”

Nina MacLaughlin spent her 20s working at a Boston newspaper, sitting behind a desk and staring at a screen. Yearning for more tangible work, she applied for a job she saw on Craigslist --- Carpenter’s Assistant: Women strongly encouraged to apply --- despite being a Classics major who couldn't tell a Phillips from a flathead screwdriver. She got the job, and in HAMMER HEAD she tells the rich and entertaining story of becoming a carpenter.