Lisa Lewis's first collection of poems meditates on people in trouble searching for a way out, people whose faith has been tested and found wanting. The child who believes in God only on Christmas Eve, the teenage girl exploring her sexuality and finding herself forever under male control, the young woman struggling in a violent relationship, a driver locked in the secure world of her car deliberately swerving close to a traffic cop or using her commuting time to dream of leaving her marriage, the men who frequent massage parlors and therapists or threaten to rape the moon— all have in common secret skepticism and isolation.

These poems address with compassion and intensity the wariness of women and men together, the distance between them as they attempt to bridge their destructive failures. In long lines loaded with the eccentric details of human life, the vision of The Unbeliever is dark, funny, and not without hope as it follows the characters through connections sought and set at odds by difference and circumstance.