At the beginning of the 20th century, historian Herman Daniel Jerrett noted that there was no other part of the world with a placer seam formation filled with small gold-bearing veins and veinlets, so great or so crumpled, crushed and its fold mashed together, as that on the Georgetown Divide. First a simple base and supply camp for early miners, Georgetown survived despite repeated challenges from fires and economic slumps. Now rebuilt, it offers physical proof of the hardy pioneer spirit that settled this small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Historic Main Street offers numerous examples of fireproof architectural styles, more hopeful than realistic, including the 100-foot-wide Main Street itself, unique in Mother Lode mining towns.

These are poems written mostly in a time of war, and rooted in the land and people of Nicaragua. Zamora draws deep portraits of women of all classes, often using her own body as a metaphor and starting point. Recalling the years of revolution and resistance to U.S. intervention, she follows the riverbed of her memories through the land of her childhood, mourns the devastation of war, and illuminates the heroic lives of ordinary men and women. Daisy Zamora was program director of clandestine Radio Sandino during the revolution and later served as vice-minister of Culture in the Sandinista government.