Losing a family member can be a traumatic event. The author was devastated after losing two sons to needless traffic accidents and then a wife to illness. In 1984, at the age of sixty-three, Smith’s therapy was to embark on a mammoth... Read More

The author (1903-1996) spent her entire life between two worlds. She was at different times Japanese and American, a member of the elite upper class and a struggling laborer, a political activist and an employee of the War Department. In... Read More

Parents who have children on the autism spectrum usually start out with a “normal” child. Their shock comes slowly, as their typical-looking child loses skills like talking; shows little interest in people; avoids eye contact; or in... Read More

Where some might say, “If you can’t win, why fight?” the author would ask, “If you don’t fight, how can you win?” Condemned by the Chinese Communist regime to live all his life as a cave-dwelling peasant, Shen-with an... Read More

When the author, forty-something, single, and an admitted “compulsive reader of the classifieds,” spies a notice of cottages for sale, she is immediately intrigued. The thought of adding to her very small Cape Cod house with a... Read More

“I do not remember much more, except the pushcarts laden with emaciated, naked corpses, their limbs often hanging over the side of the cart. Once in a while some would fall off … being picked up and thrown back on the heap.” This... Read More

“True love, by definition, is unrequited,” claims the narrator of this polished debut novel, recounting her love affair with the troubled Louis. The first-person protagonist goes unnamed, but that seems inconsequential-what matters... Read More

It’s tempting to think of the current era as unique. Popular culture and the news media are filled with pronouncements that society is in the process of the greatest transformation since the development of agriculture, or since the... Read More