Sooner or later it was bound to happen. Elizabeth Graver and Suzanne Matson have much in common - both are accomplished writers, members of Boston College's English Department, and, in their first novels, plumb the richness embedded in the lives of seemingly unremarkable individuals. Graver's Unravelling is sited in and around a 19th century New England mill town, while Matson's The Hunger Moon unrolls in yesterday's Boston. In Civil War Boston Thomas H. O'Connor of the Boston College History Department draws on his vast reservoir of lore as the dean of Boston's historians to provide a fascinating account of how the years of the Civil War transformed the Hub's economic and social landscape in ways still evident and problematic. Raw courage may seem to be distributed rarely among us.
Human nature weathers the storm remarkably well.
He discovered a place for all three in his own life's journey. Nouwen's meditative reflection on Rembrandt's painting led me along a similar path. The Dean's List is not copyrighted. Please feel free to refer to it without attribution, post it on the refrigerator or simply employ it for some more pedestrian purpose.