Wood’s earlier novels contain explicit social critiques, but 'Stone Yard Devotional' does its intellectual heavy lifting at an arm’s-length distance. “I wanted to write a book that doesn’t teach or explain or condescend,” she told America in an interview over Zoom in February.

Peace among nations is a necessary precondition for any solution to the climate change crisis. Instead, we have a renewed arms race and a mad dash for exhaustible natural resources.

Looming on the geopolitical horizon this week is a significant threat to the multinational campaign on climate change that emerged far from Baku, when Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States.

We have recently seen entire communities wiped off the map by wildfires fueled by ever-hotter weather. This has grave implications for tradition, family and other goods that social conservatives value.

Helene’s devastation is offering a hard lesson: No community or U.S. region can consider itself safe from the extreme weather events that global warming is seeding and supercharging.

Chief Correspondent Kevin Clarke joined a team from Catholic Charities USA assessing needs in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.