The Boys in the Band

The Boys in the Band

My husband was only ten years old when The Beatles set fire to America on the weekly Ed Sullivan Show. In the winter of 1964, on an otherwise normal Sunday night, he sat on the couch with his parents in front of their hulking console TV and watched as John, Paul, George and Ringo…

Just Passing Through

Just Passing Through

I’m not supposed to admit this, but there was a moment during my visit to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument—as the trail petered out unexpectedly in an eerie blue landscape of columns and spires, where nothing but scattered tufts of grass and the wide gray morning sky overhead looked even slightly familiar—when I…

A Stitch in Time

A Stitch in Time

The lines aren’t all entirely straight and the stitches aren’t always even, but there’s no mistaking Windsor Castle rising above the treetops or the royal coat of arms down below, beneath the slightly imperfect slogan that appears to read GODSAVE THE KING. Back in 1936 someone spent days—perhaps even weeks—memorializing with a needle a moment…

The Indian Shirt Story

The Indian Shirt Story

A brew pub, a historic house, trouble with the local American Indian community, and unexpected attention from the biggest country music star ever to come out of Nashville. It’s going to be a tough summer for Bess in the free-thinking, left-leaning, soy-eating, fish-loving town of Port Heron.

A Crack in Everything

A Crack in Everything

Emily Larch’s world is rocked twice—first, when her husband unexpectedly becomes governor, and again when she accidentally unleashes the ghost of radical patriot Thomas Paine inside the Governor’s Mansion. As the first lady soon discovers, an 18th-century firebrand hiding out in the attic of the state’s most public residence is a pretty hard secret to keep.