"The Mystery Still Drives Us is a prismatic, mysterious read that will thoroughly envelop you and usher you along on a poetic journey that will leave an undeniable, indelible mark. These billowing, prayerful reflections of longing will open you to the mystery."

-Frank LaRue Owen, author of award-winning The School of Soft-Attention

"One part beautifully illuminated love story, one part elongated human heartbreak, and a third part warning signs for a broken and beautiful world. McDowell photographs the curves of the earth and the sharpness of desire with the deep clarity only a poet can reveal, while somehow offering up a balm for all of us, poet and pedestrian alike."

-Thomas Qualls, author of the award-winning novel The Painted Oxen

"This is poetry for the soul and for the body, sensuous and textured-alive. Its rhythms and themes are familiar, but still fresh, at once quotidian and accessible, but still mysterious. You'll want to sit with The Mystery Still Drives Us under a tree, carry it around with you and read and re-read; for it offers, in some small way, in its subtle and slow depth, an antidote to the superficiality and busy-ness of our world."

-Theodore Richards, award-winning author of Cosmosophia