“Ray McManus’s incantatory rhythms, his catalogs of nouns (and sometimes verbs), carry us into the liminal territory between experience and music, which is to say, the territory of dream. . . . We trust these fine, strong poems, trust their emotional authenticity in response both to the real outer world and to the imaginative inner one.” —Susan Ludvigson, author of Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems and Escaping the House of Certainty

“The poetry in Ray McManus’s first collection is touched by a light hand that points to and illuminates its sparkling surfaces and deep interior spaces. The work searches out, mourns, and celebrates place, family, love, and death—at all times asserting the continuity between what can be seen and what must be imagined, and recreated from the complex, divided, and parallel pasts of South Carolina and Ireland. . . . This book is full of fervor and grace and is driven by a fierce regard for language and an understated moral vision. A terrific debut.”—Eamonn Wall, author of Refuge at DeSoto Bend and From the Sin-é Cafe to the Black Hills

Selected by Kate Daniels as the winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, Driving through the Country before You Are Born is the first collection of poetry from Ray McManus. The speaker in these poems searches for redemption and solace while navigating from a traumatic loss in the past to a present fraught with violence and self-destruction. The volume chronicles his attempt to glean some measure of forgiveness through acceptance of his own responsibly for his circumstances. The reader is called on to witness family stories without happy endings, landscapes on the verge of collapse, and prophetic visions of horrors yet to come. From these haunting visions, the only viable salvation is rooted in hope that, out of the ruins, there remains the possibility of a fresh beginning.