The forward trenches in the hills just beyond the abandoned village of Talish, in Nagorno-Karabakh, are reminiscent of World War I: long, endless, slits in the ground, the dirt buttressed by wood, with periodic firing posts and dugouts. Stacked tires packed with dirt stand in for sandbags, but otherwise it looks like the Western Front […]
Category Archives: Untold Stories
When I was cleaning out my father’s home after he died, I came across a sweater box under his bed. In it were some of the short stories I had written in the third and fourth grade. For a few minutes I sat on the floor and read them, recalling the bedroom in Connecticut in […]
Good Reads, The Writing Process, Untold Stories
The novel, “Midwives,” 20 years later: What was the early reaction to the novel like? Has it changed over time?
12
May
May
It was twenty years ago that “Midwives” was published: 1997. Seinfeld was still on the air. The Spice Girls had two of the year’s biggest hits. The Dow Jones closed for the first time at. . .7,000. Throughout this month I will be answering questions from the Reading Group Center to celebrate the new, twentieth […]
The Writing Process, Untold Stories, Vermont
The novel, “Midwives,” 20 years later: Is there anything I would update or change?
10
May
May
It was twenty years ago that “Midwives” was published: 1997. I had hair then. Our phones were considerably less smart. Our books were made of paper. Throughout this month I will be answering questions from the Reading Group Center to celebrate the new, twentieth anniversary edition of the novel. Here is their first one. As […]
26
Apr
Apr
ADOLF HITLER KEPT a bust of Ataturk in his office. Heinrich Himmler considered moving to Turkey in the early 1920s. And Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, admitted in his memoirs (penned while awaiting his execution) that he first killed while serving in the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Make no mistake: The Young […]
Good Reads, The Writing Process, Untold Stories
An interview in which I reveal my favorite children’s book, what I did before I became a novelist, and my response to one very garish dust jacket
04
Jan
Jan
Over the holidays, I was interviewed about my work and “The Sleepwalker” by Laura Hamlett of Playback St. Louis. I thought her questions were really interesting. Here is the complete interview. Happy reading! * * * LAURA HAMLETT: When I read The Guest Room last fall, I found a new writer to love. I […]
16
Dec
Dec
The forward trenches in the hills just beyond the abandoned village of Talish, in Nagorno-Karabakh, are reminiscent of World War I: long, endless, slits in the ground, the dirt buttressed by wood, with periodic firing posts and dugouts. Stacked tires packed with dirt stand in for sandbags, but otherwise it looks like the Western Front […]
The bug wasn’t Gregor Samsor-big. We’re not talking Kafkaesque. But in my memory it was the size of a cat. It was vaguely wasp-like – black and yellow – with both a stinger at the rear and an earwig’s pincers emanating from the sides of its jaw. If you packed its bulbous abdomen with D […]
21
Oct
Oct
For most of America, the heartbreaking faces of Syrian refugees this year have belonged to children. We have seen them drowned and we have seen them stunned into silence by warfare and covered in blood. (We’ve also seen them likened to Skittles, but that appalling analogy belongs only to the Trumps.) At the moment, however, […]
24
Dec
Dec
Fifty-two years ago, on December 24th, the three astronauts from the Apollo 8 mission to the moon were approaching the lunar sunrise. Yes, it was Christmas Eve. In the United States, it was nighttime. It was 1968. Cue the space music. My family and I were living in a Connecticut suburb of New York City, […]
