In Eileen Garvin’s debut novel, The Music of Bees, three lonely strangers grapple with grief and loss. Stuck in their own sadness, they’ve lost the will to connect meaningfully with…
The character in Steven Rowley’s book, The Guncle, unexpectedly gains guardianship of his young niece and nephew for the summer. His advice, “normal is a terrible thing to aspire to,…
This line in Laurie Frankel’s new book, One Two Three, didn’t strike me because I have something to feel guilty about. I’m not harboring guilt over an enormous secret, or…
In Matt Haig’s, The Midnight Library, the main character searches within herself to determine what defines a fulfilling life. According to my kindle, the line “an unfinished jigsaw of a…
I am the parent who pays close attention to my children’s required summer reading. I do it because it gives me a chance to engage them in a conversation about…
This great line from Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore, jumped off the page, and had me screaming YES (in my mind)! The words gave me an immediate kinship…
In Kristin Hannah’s new book, The Four Winds, she writes about a horrific time in America’s history: the Great Depression and the drought-stricken Great Plains described as the Dust Bowl.Many…
This sentence from This Tender Land immediately struck me as a great one, but I’ve struggled with writing about it for weeks. So, on a three-hour car trip with my…
It is every writer's goal, I imagine, to bundle words together in an invitation for readers to think and feel. The bees in my chest stir. These six small words…
This great line, from Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan, stopped me on the page. It’s a laugh out loud way to describe a good marriage and I've had…