Nonfiction
In the 1940’s, a young Marine returns from China to a small Pennsylvania town. One year later finds the body of the mother-in-law sprawled on the kitchen floor and the body of the wife in the living room, both perforated with bullets.
This is a temple for them, I thought. This is where the gods will be merciful or not. And I speak for the gods.
The thing about soap operas—and this gets left out when people criticize them—is that virtue is always rewarded, and vice is always punished.
When sick New Yorkers failed to find a place in private institutions like New York Hospital, they turned to public hospitals like Bellevue.
The book is dazzling and groundbreaking. The author’s bright, spare prose engages us intensely with her characters and their relationships.
On the east side of First Avenue, between 26th and 31st Streets in Manhattan, stood the ancient brick pile that was Bellevue Hospital.
Any place a place of refuge. Any place, as long as it’s not the place you’ve left. Live anywhere, but always leave the back door open.
I knew plague existed in Mongolia, but I had always thought it stayed in smaller towns further west.
