Story Telling

Part 1: Winter Stitches At twenty minutes to six on a January morning, the sewing room at the back of our farmhouse in Marrow Gap, North Carolina, is the coldest …

The Registered Quilts Read More

Part 1: The Plate On the Thursday after Thanksgiving, the table in the Lodge dining room on Cedar Street in Haskell Bluff, Minnesota, still had its leaves in, because nobody …

The Extra Place Read More

Part 1 My name is Zofia, though everyone has called me Zoe since I came to America. I was born in Warsaw, and my best friend was our next-door neighbor, …

I Promised Him in Warsaw and Then We Fled Read More

Part 1 Seven-year-old Ashley’s trembling voice came through the 911 line, barely audible over the relentless rain pounding against the metal awning outside her small rented house. Victor, the emergency …

Her Daddy Left for Medicine and Didn’t Come Back Read More

Part 1 My Tupperware demonstration tote is in the trunk of my car right now. It’s a big orange tub with a snap lid, and my name is on a …

He Told Me My Daughter Wasn’t His Problem Anymore Read More

Part 1 I drove a school bus in Holdrege for thirty-eight years. I count heads every time I walk into a room. I can’t help it. Forty-two kids, every morning, …

He Told the Boy I Raised That I Didn’t Want Him Read More

Part 1 I drove a school bus in Holdrege for thirty-eight years. I count heads every time I walk into a room. I can’t help it. Forty-two kids, every morning, …

He Told the Boy I Raised That I Didn’t Want Him Read More

Part 1: The Shelf The photograph sat between two cut-glass vases on the third shelf of the bookcase in Hester Renner’s living room in Tallow Creek, Arkansas, and for as …

Face Down Read More

Part 1: Easter Morning The greenhouse door on the Sayles place in Harrow Gap, Vermont, has a brass latch that my husband Lewis cut from a salvaged ship’s fitting in …

The Commercial Word Read More

Part 1: Mowed Every other Thursday, at six in the morning, the back lot on the Gerrity place in Alder Fork, Missouri, gets mowed in stripes. My grandson Tyler does …

The Back Lot Read More