In WHAT BLOOMS IN WINTER, Maria Mazziotti Gillan finds cause to celebrate the clarity and comfort of people and times past. This book is a praise song for all that is human and that survives despite grief and loss. It is one woman's story of an immigrant girl growing up in the 1950s in Paterson, NJ, and seeing over a distance of so many years all that she was given to carry into her life as a woman--wife, mother, daughter, grandmother, widow, and arts and eco-activist. All these experiences and people have formed her into the indomitable woman she is. Laced with humor and optimism, this book leads us to believe that flowers that bloom in winter out of hard ground have their own audacious beauty.
