Late on a February Tuesday morning, I packed a pile of books and papers into the back of my car and drove south and then east along some winding Indiana roads that led me further and further into the country. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I arrived at one of the most charming little… [Read More]
A Late Arrival at Downton Abbey
February 17, 2012 By
I confess. I arrived late to the Downton Abbey party. When season one began I was intrigued, but Sunday nights didn’t work for me. Then everyone was watching it and my contrarian instincts kicked in: Who wants to watch what everybody’s watching? When season two began I told myself I didn’t want to jump in… [Read More]
Tales of the London Book Festival and John Ericsson Events
February 10, 2012 By
If you want to find characters for a novel, there’s no better place to look than a writer’s event. Since the January 26 awards dinner for the London Book Festival was an international gathering the “characters” were even more colorful: A former Yugoslavian who spoke very little English, a tall-tale teller from Montana, a charming… [Read More]
“Loud Voices”
November 14, 2011 By
Lucretia Jones could not have had an easy time raising her daughter Edith. She was a woman of average intelligence and superficial interests suddenly confronted by a child whose brilliance was apparent from the get-go. She probably tried valiantly to maintain her maternal authority and, if her daughter’s claim that pleasing her mother and pleasing… [Read More]
Jack is Back!
October 28, 2011 By
You just can’t keep a bad man down. Connected, as he is to Halloween (ever wonder where the term “jack-o-lantern” came from?), October is Wicked Jack’s favorite month and he was invited back to Indiana by the Richmond Symphony Orchestra. What were they thinking??? Aren’t symphonies stuffy organizations?? Evidently not! Five woodwind players from the… [Read More]
Esther Morris Gets Some Company
October 10, 2011 By
“If you visit Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol,” I observe, in the Author’s Note to When Esther Morris Headed West, (Holiday House, 2001) “you’ll see fifty statues, one from each state, standing in a circle. Forty-nine of them are men. The fiftieth is Esther Morris…” That changed in 2009: Helen Keller, representing Alabama,… [Read More]
On the Road
October 3, 2011 By
One of the joys of writing nonfiction is that your books take you places in the research phase and take you places again when people start finding out what you’ve written and want you to come and talk to them. So I was on the road or, more precisely, on The Road last weekend. Just… [Read More]
The Good Company of Story
September 12, 2011 By
There’s a lovely sculpture by Victor Issa in the Frederic Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s called “Grandpa, the Storyteller” and it captures for me the essence of story: Story connects, it communicates across time and generations. As the novelist Graham Smith put it, “As long as there’s a story, it’s all right.” For… [Read More]
Shakespeare
August 29, 2011 By
I’m just home from the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, reading through the “Twelfth Night,” and trying to pick up anything I might have missed when I saw it on stage. Shakespeare is a challenge and there’s no getting to the bottom of any of his plays. There’s no last word on what the bard… [Read More]