The terminal illness and death of the author's father and a recent trip to Egypt led Lola Lemire Tostevin to explore what she perceives to be the essential relation between language and death. In the hieroglyphs and carvings of ancient Egyptian temples she experienced how the bleakness of death and the desert were transformed into something that continues to live. Of the writing of this book Tostevin writes, "The journal entries of Cartouches were not written in the usual traditional diary form in which a day's events are recorded. They were, like the poems, 'fashioned' as a process of writing through which the writer gives meaning to events that may (or may not) have happened. These events become hieroglyphs-iconic moments, if you will-framed within the pages of a book. They are small cartouches and amulets that help the writer define who she is.