Brother Aron is a Mennonite epic: a book-length poem of exile and endurance, spoken by a Mennonite refugee fleeing revolutionary Russia for rural British Columbia. Modeled on Dante’s Purgatorio, the poem takes place in the hard-labour refugee hamlet of early Yarrow. The speaker, Aron, holds fast to three anchors: his telescope, which connects him to “the heavens’ / near-abouts”; his wife Helena, whose lyric presence helps him face the harsh dogma of his new community; and the deep faith of his free-thinking friend Jacob. Neufeldt keeps us grounded in Yarrow, while urging every scene toward a “Nameless vast creative power.”