Categories
Fiction

Labor and Delivery*

When a friend gave me Ariel Lawhon’s 2023 novel The Frozen River about a midwife in 1700s Maine, I slipped easily into the pleasurable rhythm of living other people’s experiences.  Martha Ballard was a wife and mother in her fifties. She lived in northern Maine by a river that would freeze every winter. Her life revolved around […]

Categories
Fiction

Growing Up Is Tough

Sure-footed as mountain goats, my sister Long-Long and I picked our way down the steep, narrow dirt path that typified much of Hong Kong’s terrain. Rough-cut slabs of stone, some cracked and dangerous, bridged over ravines. I was seven. Rose was a year younger. We were on our own, on our way to catch the […]