Ms. Cotter writes:

The title Turnstones hopes to evoke that which becomes the means to an act of turning. It suggests that every structure that has sedimented over time contains another possibility, something imprinting the earth that is still overshadowed. It responds to a year of unprecedented crisis that marks a transition into the unknowable. Turnstones is a word found in a poem that, being unknown, offers the freedom to imagine. The dictionary says it is a small bird whose long beak enables it to dig under objects and find nourishment where others have not looked. This too is apt.