He started playing the piano at age four. At eight years old, Leon Fleisher made his public debut in music performing with the New York Philharmonic. The director called him “the pianistic find of the century” and soon he was accepted to study with some of the greatest teachers of his time.

His star continued to rise in his twenties as he signed an exclusive contract with Columbia Masterworks. Particularly acclaimed for his interpretations of Bach and Beethoven, in the classical music world, he was becoming known around the globe as the “next big thing.”

And then, when he was in his 30s, at the peak of his career, something happened [...]

To celebrate my son Brent’s 16th birthday, my two boys and I signed up for the Tennessee Motorcycle Safety Course. It’s a two-day program designed for folks who’ve never ridden a cycle before. At the end of the second day, the prize is a motorcycle license.

Though we don’t have motorcycles, we dreamed of riding together on the Natchez Trace, a beautiful stretch of highway that runs from Nashville to Mississippi. No stop signs or traffic lights. Only beautiful scenery and gently winding roads.

Starting our day at the training facility with six other men, we began with [...]

Henri the painter is one of Steinbeck’s quirky characters in Cannery Row. He’s known for the unique and intricate boats he builds, often taking years to work on each one.

But there’s something odd about Henri. He never finishes a boat. When it’s almost completed, he takes it apart and begins anew, having no intention of ever putting the boat in the water. Two of his friends discuss his behavior…

I have always loved a perch, a high place from which to look out at the world.

The earliest perch I remember was the top bunk of a bed my father made for me. There I could watch for imagined bad guys and from my vantage point, keep myself and my small herd of stuffed animals safe from harm. And then one summer, after watching the movie Swiss Family Robinson, my dad built a tree house for my sister and me. Nestled high in the branches of a walnut tree with its small porch overlooking our farm, it too was a place to keep watch.

In my teens, my roost was at the crest of a small mountain in my hometown of Montreat, North Carolina. There, hidden in the crevasse between two boulders, I could observe the…

“Florence was murdered three nights ago,” Robinah said, grieving not only the loss of her friend, but also that she had missed the funeral. She had seen Florence on Monday night. Now she was in her grave on the edge of the Kampala slums.

They found her when the sun came up on Tuesday morning, crumpled on the muddy, red clay like some discarded rag doll. After she was raped and beaten by a group of men who will likely remain forever anonymous, they shoved sticks…

A woman with multiple felonies sat to my left. Across from me, seated next to one another, were two women who’d prostituted themselves in the past to pay for their drug habits. To my right was a woman who’d lost count of the number of times she’d been arrested and put in jail.

I was attending “the circle,” a weekly…

Not long after our first child was born, some friends arrived at our door with a gift and a loaf of freshly baked bread.  Soon, the bread’s aroma began to fill the room and within minutes I was transported to another time and another place where I had smelled this bread before.

I found myself in the home of my grandparents on…