In pruning, a decision must be made whether to "either slowly hollow, heartwood rotting outward, / or grow from green into a fiery blaze in autumn." Pruning Burning Bushes is a collection of poems that explores the intersection of the natural and spiritual worlds with the personal and familial worlds. The book wrestles with this decision--to grow or to rot. Walking from the valley to the highest summit and back down into the depths of the canyon riverbed, the poems travel through the author's childhood filled with family and farm life, new marriage life, and subsequent miscarriages, the births of her children and deaths of relatives, and walking in the quiet waters of faith, sometimes raging and sometimes rejoicing.