“She held it high for all to see, and it looked like a record of damage, all missed circles and broken lines.”

Was virtual better than nothing or were we merely deluding ourselves?

When can I see you? we asked each other, but we really wanted to know, when can we be in the same room? When can we kiss, touch, and hold one another? How long must we emulate the sexless lives of hermits? A few more weeks, a few more months, a whole year?

Amy Bonnaffons:“I really liked the idea that even the people who literally carry out the business of death and of transition from this world to the next have no idea what they’re doing.”

"I loved that, no matter where the characters went underground, they came out into the same space..I could see a double-paged spread showing a huge old fashioned attic — full of the different entry points. To me, the story said, whatever you think you know about the rules of life, forget it, ain’t necessarily true."  

A book can change a life, even save one. That’s what a book did for Mitchell S. Jackson and now he has written a memoir with that same aspiration: Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family.