In Before the Storm Takes It Away, Gaylord Brewer steps away from poetry in these short explorations in nonfiction—alternately dark, wry, contemplative, and explosive, what begins as a seasonal experiment in genre becomes, when March 2020 brings a suddenly altered world, a whole different beast.

Baking a cake for Armageddon? Choosing the proper superpower? Finding solace in the imposed isolation of a world plague? In Before the Storm Takes It Away, Gaylord Brewer offers the answers. With topics as far-ranging as fondly recalled feasts in Italy to Charlton Heston’s Holy Bible, the pleasures of home birding to cooking with blood, simple bucolic pleasures to the deafening silence of lost friends, tales of beloved dogs to homoeroticism in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, to solar eclipses, gardening, and the rising death toll, Brewer steps away from poetry in these explosive and surprising explorations in brief nonfiction. What begins as a one-year experiment in genre becomes—when March 2020 arrives with its altered world—the author’s pandemic book. And more. From whence that trepidation throughout the winter, so unnerving at the time? Those dark prophecies? First scent of the storm. Nothing ever the same again.