Community stories.
Stories about neighbors, small towns and strangers who show up.
The Coach Who Never Gave Up
The first time I met Marcus Dell, he told me to go to hell. He was fourteen, a freshman, standing in the doorway of my... Read more
The Morning His Town Brought In His Harvest
The drought broke me before it broke the wheat. I want to start there, because most people who knew me back then would have said... Read more
The Potluck They Tried To Move
The notice went up on the clubhouse corkboard on a Tuesday, pinned dead center where the old sign-up sheet used to hang, and it took... Read more
The Zucchini War of Maple Street
The first shot of the war was fired over a chain-link fence on Maple Street in August of the year my husband died, when my... Read more
The Fourth They Let Me Belong
Gail Stroud stood up on the courthouse steps with a paper plate in her hand and told the whole square that a certificate does not... Read more
The Useless Barn That Saved a Town
For most of my life I was ashamed of my father’s barn. I need to say that plainly, right at the start, because everything else... Read more
The Christmas the Whole Town Showed Up
For four winters I never told one soul in Coldwater County how close we were to going under, and then three days before Christmas I... Read more
The Headstone The Whole Town Bought
The grave had been bare for eleven months when I finally admitted to myself that it might stay that way. I want to be honest... Read more
The Knitting Circle Set Me Up
For eleven years I was the woman who found everybody else somebody. I paired off half of Dunmore County from a card table at the... Read more
The Man Who Fixed Every Bike
The first bicycle showed up fixed on a Tuesday in 1994, and I want to tell you about that Tuesday because it is where this... Read more
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