"When a seemingly routine medical procedure results in her mother's premature death, Anne Panning is left reeling. In her first full-length memoir, the celebrated essayist draws on decades of memory and experience as she pieces together the hard truths about her own past and her mother's. We follow Panning's winding path from rural Minnesota to the riverbanks of Vietnam's Mekong Delta. A stark, poignant tale of two women deeply connected, yet forever apart. Dragonfly notes is a testament to the prevailing nature of love, whether in the form of a rediscovered note, a sudden moment of unexpected recall, or sometimes, simply the sigh of a dragonfly flitting past"--Page 4 cover