In this novel in poems, author Terry Wolverton suggests that the social institutions--the family, the Church, the medical establishment--that were supposed to protect Marie instead failed her. She contrasts the society into which Marie was born--early-Twentieth Century Detroit--with the culture of the Wendat Indians who'd lived in the same region hundreds of years earlier; the Wendat believed that madness was the result of "unfulfilled desires."

In seventy-three vivid and lyrical poems, Embers contends that women's "bad" behavior may in fact be justifiable resistance against systems that exploit and endanger women.