Mennonites formed themselves in Holland five hundred years ago after a man named Menno Simons became so moved by hearing Anabaptist prisoners singing hymns before being executed by the Spanish Inquisi...
It was the first time in my life that I had been aware of my own existence. It was the first time in my life I had realized that I was alive. And if I was alive, then I could die, and I mean forever....
It seemed like he could never figure out which Trudie he loved the best, the docile church basement lady in the moon boots or the rebellious chick with the sexy lingerie. I imagine that both of those...
In the airport we hugged each other all at once, a team huddle but with nothing but a Hail Mary left in our playbook. We'd been through all of this before. We loved each other. We fought for each othe...
I was just learning how to read and was reading every sign out loud, practising, and when I saw Cockburn Avenue I said Cock Burn Avenue and then asked what's that? And Elf, she must have been eleven o...
I understand that if you say a certain word over and over and it begins to make you feel bad then you should goddamn stop saying that word.
I feel safe in the car, alone and protected. I can see people milling about in the parking lot but they can't see me. Well, they can but they think I'm insane so they look away which is the same as be...
Dan wanted me to stay. I wanted Elf to stay. Everyone in the whole world was fighting with somebody to stay. When Richard Bach wrote If you love someone, set them free he can't have been directing his...
Bob Marley says it too but he says every little thing gonna be all right and that strikes me as an appropriate qualifier even if all he was doing was getting enough syllables to match the music.
Between 2005-2009, more than 300 girls and women of Molotschna were made unconscious and attacked in their own beds. On average, an attack occurred every three or four days.Finally, Leisl Neustandter...
It was ludicrous to think that we could just talk our way out of shame, that shame was necessary, that it prevented us from repeating shameful actions and that it motivated us to say we were sorry and...
The idea of working well was a relative one for us and that in the context of our present lives my mother was right, it was absolutely fine, no problem.
Yolandi, the central character in the book All My Puny Sorrows says that the core of the argument for it [assisted suicide] is maximizing individual autonomy and minimizing human suffering (p. 222).
When we got back to the house Logan grabbed his basketball, threw it really hard against the hallway wall, knocked the framed family photo to the floor-it didn't break, he didn't pick it up-and left w...
When I listened to her play I felt I should not be in the same room with her. There were hundreds of people but nobody left. It was a private pain. By private I mean to say unknowable. Only the music...
We were making good time now, barrelling through the bodacious curves of southeastern Utah and ignoring all impending signs of trouble with the van. At least I was.You guys happy? I said.The kids smil...
The town office building has a giant filing cabinet full of death certificates that say choked to death on his own anger or suffocated from unexpressed feelings of unhappiness.
The guy's name was Colt.Colt, said Thebes. Like a baby, male horse?I guess, said the guy, or a gun.Well, which do you prefer? she said.What do you mean? he asked.Like, how do you prefer to think of yo...
That’s me! Elf had said. I reminded her that she had her sight, she could see, she’d always been able to see but she told me she’d never adjusted to the light, she’d just never developed a tolerance f...
My mother tells Tina that she doesn't like books where the protagonist is established as Sad on page one. Okay, she's sad! We get it, we know what sad is, and then the whole book is basically a descri...