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In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith mines the dissolution of her marriage as the starting point for a meditation on her life and the roles she’s assumed during it: wife, mother, daughter, artist, woman. Drawing its name from the final line of her viral 2016 poem, “Good Bones,” the book shows how the fame and success Smith experienced exacerbated the cracks in her marriage. Working through her grief over her divorce with tenacity, humor, and grace, Smith offers a thoughtful and vulnerable portrait of the possibilities after heartbreak. —Cady Lang
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