More on: Fiction

Later, looking at his partially closed eyes, she suddenly remembered a creole word from the country where she had spent her childhood. Sodade. A mixture of nostalgia, tenderness, and yearning, a sense of the fragility of happiness.

Jonah was on the lookout for enemies everywhere, just like his late father, whose vigilance ultimately proved prophetic if futile.

She was pretty sure she was too crazy to be a mother, and when the yearnings showed up, every few years, they now passed quickly.

When fiction leaves questions unanswered

A story gets away from its author.

What does an artist give up for art?

Can a four-year-old understand stealing?

This one was here with all his roses. He was from a big family in Jamaica. They didn’t have much in common, except for their difference.

He took me fishing as a teen, lecturing me about boys, the proper way to chase them, and the proper way to leave if they needed leaving.

It’s a basement full of cobwebs. Mice and dust and boxes. One is filled with letters in his language, and another night, before he got on a plane to identify the body of his father, he told her of those letters.