“A man-made rill lined with local river stones flows between the grasses, opening into an eye-shaped pond that both looks up at the clouds and reflects them, before continuing on its little way.” I wrote about a private garden on a grand hidden estates outside Geneva, Switzerland, redesigned by landscape design firm Wirtz…(Read More)
“To me, freedom is being able to choose a career path based on vocation rather than the fear of ending up without medical insurance.” For my op-ed in USA Today on being a writer, being an expat, endometriosis, and universal healthcare, please look here…(Read More)
“To me, freedom is being able to choose a career path based on vocation rather than the fear of ending up without medical insurance.” For my op-ed in USA Today on being a writer, being an expat, endometriosis, and universal healthcare, please look here…(Read More)
Twenty-five copies of the paperback edition of Shining Sea, before it comes out on August 8, are up for grabs on Goodreads. Deadline is June 29! To enter, look here…(Read More)
“I want to understand human beings, what makes them who they are and why they do the things they do.” The Woolf sent me some of the most incisive questions on the craft of writing, the researching of Shining Sea, the influence of expat life on my work, and writerly responsibility I’ve ever received…(Read More)
If you read Commonwealth by Ann Patchett and are looking for similar reads, The Seattle Public Library suggests you pick up Shining Sea. Having read Commonwealth, I’d agree! Some other great suggestions on the same list–books by Angela Flournoy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ayana Mathis, Anne Tyler, Tiphanie Yanique…. Very nice to have Shining Sea…(Read More)
Anyone who wants to understand anything about the US prisoner-of-war experience under the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII needs to read this narrative feat by authors Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman. Switching between the minutely researched stories of a young American cowboy and artist named Ben Steele–whose experience informed the character…(Read More)
In Nevil Shute’s 1950 novel, later made into a film, a young Englishwoman working as a secretary in what was then known as Malaya before being embroiled in WWII becomes involved with an Australian fellow prisoner of war. After the war is over, she decides to emigrate to Australia to find him then uses…(Read More)
Laura Hillenbrand’s nonfiction account of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini’s survival, adrift in an army-issue raft after his bomber crashed into the Pacific during WWII and then as a POW under the Japanese, as well as his eventual struggle to adapt to civilian life, is an extraordinarily well-written book about an extraordinary…(Read More)
Thank you to Jill Marsh and Book Muse for this graceful, on point review of Shining Sea and a Recommended Reading Award! “Woodstock and freedom; Vietnam and death; AIDS and counterculture; [Shining Sea] is an evocative yet concise American novel of self-discovery in which successive generations try to define themselves and their notions of…(Read More)
