In poems of candor, power, and great love, Paul Martin offers here a genesis after an exodus: the extended American immigrant family, having left Central Europe and begun again along the Lehigh River in Eastern Pennsylvania. A chronicle shaped by pick and sledge and deep-running affections; gratitude and laughter; wound and scar, passages and passings, and all along, the constant river. River Scar is nothing less than a testament, a book of stunning psalms, everything touched by the river made sacred. --Steve Myers, author of Memory's Dog These poems create jewel-like moments of intense focus, capturing the small and large brutalities and passionate family loyalties of a Catholic, immigrant, working class childhood in the early and middle years of the 20th century --Patrick Donnelly, author of Little Known Operas.