Jackie’s words are steady witnesses. They speak of love and loss, of identity and womanhood, of small-town rhythms and universal truths. They begin in delight, as Robert Frost promised, and end in the kind of wisdom that makes you close the book slowly, letting the silence after the last line do its work.

She recalls when her first attempt at a  jasmine bloom fell apart mid-cut but she kept going. “If someone else can do it, I can do it,” she told herself. That mantra carried her through countless hours of trial and error, until she slowly began to master her craft.