Saturday Review: “The Power of Redemption in Poetry,” a review by Grace C. Ocasio of Gail Peck’s In the Shadow of Beauty (Finishing Line Press, 2025) in NCLR Online Spring 2026
In Gail Peck’s poetry collection In the Shadow of Beauty, she explores family, memory, and loss. In her review, Grace C. Ocasio explains that Peck’s poems show “the contradictory nature of the human condition,” often pushing “the boundaries of polite conversation” to uncover the imperfections beneath familial love. The collection offers both fracture and forgiveness, reminding readers that even painful histories have moments of light.
Ocasio notes that the first section of the collection centers on photographs and traces the unraveling of Peck’s parents’ relationship. She notes that Peck regenerates her parents’ relationship, leaving readers with a “renewed sense of the vast beauty captured in the smallest of instances.” As the collection progresses, Ocasio describes a “reckoning of sorts” in poems about Peck’s mother, highlighting moments of reflection that feel heartfelt. In the final section, she sees the poems as an homage to family members and praises the closing piece as “masterfully crafted and lyrical to its core.”
Ocasio calls In the Shadow of Beauty “engaging” and says that Peck’s words “honor human relations, lending value to all of life’s moments, great and small.” She suggests that Peck’s exploration of family becomes a mirror for readers, encouraging them to reflect on their own relationships, regrets, and reconciliations. Ocasio presents the collection as both deeply personal and widely relatable – a work that stays with readers and invites them to consider the lasting power of memory, forgiveness, and love.
Read the entire review here and buy a copy of In the Shadow of Beauty from the publisher, bookshop.org, or your local independent bookstore.
