Trudy Bush
The Lighthouse
The first murder victim in P. D. James’s latest (and perhaps last) novel is a great writer who is keenly aware that his powers of mind and imagination are fading....
Lost in the Forest
To keep his two-year-old son amused during long family dinners, a father invents a game: he tells the story of a little boy who finds himself in a scary, dange...
Notions of purity: An interview with Mary Gordon
One of America’s most admired writers, Mary Gordon writes about women’s choices and about moral and spiritual struggles in the context of strong family connections....
Hunger Strike
In one of the most ambitious works of fiction to appear in recent years, Mary Gordon wrestles with large questions: What is worth living for?...
The Rule of Four
How has a novel so erudite maintained its place week after week on the New York Times best-seller list?...
A way to live
The Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith, based at Valparaiso University in Indiana, has been encouraging people to think about and live the co...
True to life
Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx. By Heidi B. Neumark. Beacon, 275 pp., $25.00.
...Back to the future: Fourth-century style reaches Bay Area seekers
A half hour before the Sunday morning service begins, St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco already displays the holy chaos that characterizes its worship....
Time for God: Devotions for children
Besides being colleagues at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Susan R. Garrett and Amy Plantinga Pauw are friends and the mothers of young children....
State of siege: Conflict at the Church of the Nativity
As anyone following the news knows, Palestinians and Israelis offer two entirely different accounts of the violence (and two different accounts of what has happened in the region since the emergenc...
Terrorists’ timing
Why september 11?” That question, said Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, needs to be raised. “Preparations for the terrorist attack had been going on for years....
At the mosque: ‘We came here to live in peace'
Next to the minaret of Milwaukee’s Islamic Society a new sign appeared after the horrific events of September 11: “Our Hearts and Prayers Are with the Victims and Their Families.”...
Death in Holy Orders, by P. D. James
What was it . . . about this place that made him feel that his life was under judgement?" Adam Dalgliesh wonders during a sleepless night at St. Anselm's Theological College, the setting of P. D....
Nonviolence in Palestine
A terrified boy huddles in his father’s arms moments before an Israeli bullet kills him; a baby girl sits smiling in a stroller moments before a Palestinian bullet extinguishes her life....
Ben, in the World, by Doris Lessing
In her new novel, Doris Lessing gives a fresh twist to an old idea: What would our world seem like to an alien who found himself among us, and how would we react to such a being?...
The children’s view: The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce.By Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee. Hyperion, 316 pp., $24.95.
The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, by Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee
...Reasons for writing: An interview with P. D. James
I think that writing is therapeutic. I agree with the psychologist who said that creativity is the successful resolution of internal conflict. But when it comes to autobiography, I myself don’t want the beasts roaring around. It’s not that I’m suppressing them. I know who and what they are. But I think there’s something a bit self-indulgent in feeling that we can say absolutely everything. I think there are things that have happened in our lives that we have to accept and come to terms with, but I don’t think that we necessarily have to write about them.