This unique book intertwines poetry and biographies - the main biography, of course, being that of Vincent Van Gogh. But as we follow Van Gogh from his childhood, to his time preaching to coal miners, to his ecstatic periods of creation and final madness, we discover another parallel life: that of the author. And this life, too, looms largely as we follow Ralph Hammond first as a young World War II correspondent pondering the rubble of a blasted house where Van Gogh lived, then as a nostalgic visitor fifty years later tracking Van Gogh's life and paintings throughout contemporary Europe.