What happens to the relationship between a father and a daughter when the father has been kidnapped from his landscape, has lost his footing—all the while being fed lines about melting pots and bootstraps? What love affair between the father and the ground under his feet had to be buried in order for him to marry new ground in the U.S.? Charleston, South Carolina, blocks from the ocean, and landlocked Birmingham, Alabama, and Cincinnati, Ohio. Valerie Chronis Bickett is a poet and this is a memoir in verse that explores her relationship to her father and his homeland, the Greek island of Karpathos.

Vasso Paniotte Chronis made his living in construction and knew well that the earth movers come first and prepare the site for the foundation. The whole building rests on the foundation or it will sink. V.P. Chronis did well by American standards; he rose to lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and to president of a construction company. But there were sinkings this writer tells us, failings, which she wonders about in these poems. Karpathos takes a look at the effect on a child when a parent can’t or won’t look at cracks and moisture issues as maybe related to what’s underneath, what’s way underneath.

174 pages