literature 42

Tarkington hopes that more Americans will choose to trek that path of fruitful tension in this fragmented world, however difficult it may prove.

It seems that true love has been forgotten.

As Kauffman tells Bardenwerper, perhaps being cut loose from MLB will turn out to be a blessing.

The resulting work is by turns wise and questioning, witty and candid, self-effacing and impassioned.

If beauty can save the world, maybe it can even save the art world.

Here, then, is my homecoming of the imagination: to hold the past bright in memory, and to love also the saplings and the weeds of my exile.

Much might be said about the neglect of the history of the American Southwest

Knowledge is a path to love, and so I’m bound to say that the book did change my affection for the place.

Are we capable of that on a scale that will regenerate our political life? Perhaps not, at least for now, but we can take heart from the knowledge that, over…

Mary writes with gentle pathos, patience, and calm—traits common to those who have endured terrible loss. Her observations on life’s many ironies offer catharsis for author and reader alike.

But I suspect that this stirring book will strike a chord with many readers of Front Porch Republic.

Christianity spread because people actually believed Jesus was their Lord and Savior. They believed in miracles not metaphors.

I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.

While she relates the years of kaleidoscopic confusion, she provides waypoints to keep the reader grounded: “This is where we are, and this is where we’re going.”

Williams reminds us of a lesson that we should have already learned good and hard, namely that rejection of Christianity does not result in blissful liberation and self-expression.

So whatever value motherhood gets assigned on earth, it’s pretty clear what position it holds on high. You may feel invisible here, but you certainly aren’t in Heaven.

One of the novel’s achievements is the way that it unfolds this centuries-long story with both clarity and subtlety, establishing a clear feel for right and wrong while casting no…

Perhaps that’s the lesson at the heart of both The Master and His Emissary and Moby-Dick: when we adopt a utilitarian posture of domination over the world, we misapprehend it.

Organized community events bring people together and are an integral part of forging strong communal bonds in a place. Like the law, they serve a purpose in a community’s ecosystem…

To love and learn from each other in our communities is what good gossiping accomplishes.

Maybe, in the end, a home library does what a long-inhabited home does: charts a middle ground between the chaos of the world and the hyper-rationality of modernity.

Joshua Hren’s new novel, Blue Walls Falling Down, releases today. We’re happy to share the following excerpt with FPR readers.

Hence this book is something special: a new set of Christian fables on natural law that do more than teach simple morals or seek to modify children’s behavior.

Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 Just So Stories are a delightful anomaly—they feel like folk tales but were largely invented by Kipling himself as bedtime stories for his eldest daughter, Josephine.