Silence Fell marks the American debut of an extraordinary poet from the remote north of England. The poems are set on a sheep farm in the northern mountains and tell the story — in the form of a modern shepherd's calendar — of Josephine Dickinson's marriage to a Cumbrian sheep farmer, a man more than twice her age, and their life together, until his death in 2004.
During a reading tour in England, Galway Kinnell was introduced to Josephine Dickinson's work. Her poems made such an impression on him that he passed the books on to his publisher and wrote a foreword for her American debut.