Neil White, a journalist and magazine publisher, wanted the best for those he loved—nice cars, beautiful homes, luxurious clothes—but his bank account couldn’t keep up. His world fell apart when the FBI discovered his check kiting scheme and a judge sentenced him to serve eighteen months in a federal prison. But it was no ordinary prison. The beautiful, isolated colony in Carville, Louisiana, was also home to the last people in the continental United States disfigured by leprosy. Amid an unlikely mix of leprosy patients, nuns, and criminals, White’s strange and compelling journey begins.
Funny and poignant,
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I didn’t know that people come into our lives, and sometimes, if we’re terribly lucky, we get the chance to love them, that sometimes they stay, that sometimes you can, truly, depend on them.
Cathie Beck was in her late thirties and finally able to exhale after a lifetime of just trying to get by. A teenage mother harboring vivid memories of her own hardscrabble childhood, Cathie had spent years doing whatever it took to give her children the stability—or at least the illusion of it—that she’d never had. More than that, through sheer will and determination,
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“We’re just going to look.” Helen Brown had no intention of adopting a pet when she brought her sons, Sam and Rob, to visit a friend’s new kittens. But the runt of the litter was irresistible, with her overlarge ears and dainty chin.
When Cleo was delivered weeks later, she had no way of knowing that her new family had just been hit by a tragedy. Helen was sure she couldn’t keep her—until she saw something she thought had vanished from the earth forever: her son’s smile. The reckless, rambunctious kitten stayed.
Through happiness and heartbreak,
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Tuesdays with Morrie meets Eat, Pray, Love in this inspiring memoir of one man’s midlife journey to attend to the loose ends in his life, and the unexpected rewards that follow.
After losing his job, Lee Kravitz, a workaholic in his midfifties, took stock of his life and realized just how disconnected he had become from the people who mattered most to him. He committed an entire year to reconnecting with them and making amends.
Kravitz takes readers on ten transformational journeys, among them repaying a thirty-year-old debt, making a long-overdue condolence call,
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One day, at the age of thirty-one, Susan Richards realized that she was an alcoholic. She wrote it down in her journal, struck by the fact that it had taken nine years of waking up hung-over to name her illness. What had changed? Susan had a new horse, a spirited Morgan named Georgia, and, as she says: “It had something to do with Georgia. It had something to do with making a commitment as enormous as caring for a horse that might live as my companion for the next forty years. It had something to do with love.” Every day begins with a morning ride.
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Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr’s relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it.
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