Readers familiar with Lia Purpura's highly praised essay collections-Becoming, On Looking, and Rough Likeness-will know she's a master of observation, a writer obsessed with the interplay between humans and the things they see. The subject matter of All the Fierce Tethers is wonderfully varied, both low (muskrats, slugs, a stained quilt in a motel room) and lofty (shadows, prayer, the idea of beauty). The essay in itself could be a small anthology. And, in a fresh move, Purpura turns to her own, racially divided Baltimore neighborhood, where a bloodstain appears on a street separating East (with its Value Village) and West (with its community garden)

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