My husband called me to the kitchen window this morning as he made coffee. “Look, the ducks are back.” Sure enough, a mallard and his mate strolled through our backyard, no doubt looking for a place to nest. We live near a creek bed. The ducks return each year in the spring, joining sandhill. …

In Claire Luchette’s debut novel, Agatha comes into her own like a pot coming to a slow boil. The Catholic sisterhood seems a safe place to enjoy the camaraderie of other women, pass her days with spoiled students and recovering addicts, and quietly hide from questions she dares not ask. But the …

At the end of summer a few years ago, I scoped out an empty spot in my garden to plant the mystery daylily I gleaned from a wooden box at farmers market. A handwritten sign on a popsicle stick above the dug-up leftovers invited passers-by to “Take one, or not.” I took one, soil still… …

When the heroine of my forthcoming novel, Candlewood, moves to New York City in 1979 to reinvent herself, she stays at the Barbizon Hotel for Women. Although she arrives there through a series of mishaps, she finds herself at the iconic address that launched many a dreamer. Paulina Bren, recent …

This January finds me contemplating the underneath of things. Creatures tunnel under the snow making unseen paths, communicating with each other in the dark, feeding each other twigs and nuts, maps and news. And then, one day they emerge. I see their tracks tight and close along fences and rock …

What’s a cathedral to do when its beloved tabby climbs the Tree of Life for the last time? Give it a fine sendoff, of course. London’s Southwark Cathedral did just that for their feline friend who mewed among its pews for the last dozen years. Thousands who had come to know the stray, dubbed …

For a reminder of how we got to the Black Lives Matter movement and a resurgence of caste systems in America, read We Are All Good People Here by Susan Rebecca White. Two college friends find divergent paths to address the inequities they become aware of in the persons of black housekeepers. Their …

As a writer, I understand that the choice of words, and their nuance, can make all the difference in the way my readers see a character, an idea, a story. This year, the Catholic Bishops of the United States learned that lesson. They provoked a firestorm by using the words “preeminent priority” to …