For decades, I have admired Ron Hansen, the gifted author of many novels, including one of my favorites, Mariette in Ecstasy, about the religious experiences of a young nun in upstate New York. “Luminous” is how one reviewer described the book, and I think of that adjective every time I

“Just live today. Don’t bother thinking about tomorrow, or yesterday. Focus on just one day.”

The thing I remember best about Louie is that he said he hadn’t had a peach in 30 years. Louie (not his real name) was a lifer; he was in his 50s and had been in prison for over three decades. On the day he told me this, as he was hanging out in the library where I work, a couple of landscape

Mass at an immigrant detention facility in Florence, Ariz.

The boy I knew so long ago in grammar and high school had died a martyr, an American hero.

Living in a family divided by the Tiber