Thunderhead features lyrical narrative poetry that reveals the darker side of Emily Rose Cole’s upbringing and present-day struggle to reconcile trauma. This trauma stems largely from a verbally abusive mother, now deceased. Cole employs persona poems as well, forming striking parallels between her past and the lives of imaginary heroines, most notably Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz.

A former writing professor of mine calls the novella “the perfect form.” It requires the concision and pacing of a short story but is long and deep enough to draw the reader into its world and hold them there. As it happens, Kevin Lichty understands the challenges and rewards of the form, the sitting or two in which the reader lives inside a narrator’s life, rather than the weeks or months it might take to invest in a longer work.