In a polarized political world, a holiday meal is unexpectedly universal
My mother has dementia, but her old friends in no way shunned or ignored her. She was clearly happy to be there among them, and she said over and over again what wonderful people they are. There was no talk of politics, race, or religion within my hearing.
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The seeds of a novel are sown in a friend’s disappearance
Worrying for years about a question with no answer is more than a little neurotic. It can also provide fertile soil for plot development.
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An author finds his own teenage ghost in a thrift-shop book
What I saw was not a dusty old book but a boy in a wheelchair by a window in a ramshackle house farther east in Tennessee—two hours away, on the Cumberland Plateau near Crossville.
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Surviving a fall in the Colorado high country
Solo climbing in the Rockies violates every rule of mountain safety, particularly on a route I picked myself. But that’s the way I liked to do it, and had done it all my life. What happened on Mt. Yale should have been a cautionary tale, but some things are too good to give up.
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Remembering the comforts of a grandmother’s love
If I’m ever in the unfortunate position of having to choose my last meal, I will choose a ham sandwich on lightly-toasted Pepperidge Farm bread and a cup of tea with milk and sugar. This is what I ate for lunch with my grandmother most afternoons when I was in grammar school.
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A novelist reflects on the pleasures of the Southern Festival of Books, opening today in Nashville
Every year, I’m reminded of how refreshing it is to be among folks who love the sorcery of the written word. The Southern Festival of Books draws a diverse crowd, a vast spectrum of ages and ethnicities. Some gobble up mysteries; some nip at the syllables of poetry. Some are there to share their work, some are there to support those who share their work, and all of us are there because we have fallen under the spell of what can be done with words on a page.
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