My husband was recently hospitalized for complications related to his Parkinson’s disease. I took him
I recently learned that my two most recent novels, When Heart Shall Fail and A
On January 1, I read a piece by Lauren Jackson in the New York Times’s
My son, my first child, turns forty in a few days. It certainly does not
I’ve written before about spring vacations our family took when our kids were small—how I
I wrote in an earlier post that my husband and I are building a new
I wrote last week about National Library Week, and I announced that the Mid-Continent Public
Throughout 1848, fortune-seekers streamed into California, even though the U.S. government had not yet acknowledged
I’ve just begun to realize what a gift my father gave me in having our
On Mother’s Day, when he was eleven or twelve, my son gave me a pair
There is a tradition that says that when one wants to sell a house, one
I wrote back in October 2015 about the Oregon land laws in the 1840s, and
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed, is the
This week’s haunting book is the story of a family in turmoil. The protagonist is
In my gratitude list, I mentioned the support of colleagues and mentors as something I
The trees have been gorgeous this autumn in Kansas City. I can’t say it’s been
I am not a cook, and I don’t aspire to be one. But like many
In the summer of 1989, when our daughter was four and our son seven, we
When our youngest sibling (a boy) was born, my ten-year-old brother announced in awe, “When
I’m hard at work editing my next historical novel, titled Forever Mine: Love Along the
My fourth-grade teacher was a rather strict nun whose name I cannot remember. (I think