Near the end of Olive, Again, the eponymous character concludes: “I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.” But the reader of Elizabeth Strout’s two books about Olive Kitteridge understands a lot about Olive and, if they’re like me, have come to love this tough old…
In Miracle Creek, a small town in Virginia, the immigrant Yoo family has started a new business: Miracle Submarine, a center for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or HBOT. Touted as a treatment for a variety of medical conditions, their HBOT chamber (basically a big pressurized oxygen tank) has drawn clients with cerebral palsy, autism, and infertility.…
Erica’s Pick of the Week features Night Witches, Nazi Hunters, and Family secrets.
Writer, reporter, and author Gemma Hartley talks with Nate and Erica about her book Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward. Hartley discusses why women often take on such a large share of the unseen and undervalued work in the home and offers practical advice on how partners can begin establishing more equality.…
“The implacability and violence of nature always awed him. That it could be entirely heedless and yet so beautiful. That awed him. But also its intricate intelligence. Its balancings. Its quiet compensations. It was like some unnamed justice permeated everything. He would not go further than that. Still, the workings of nature made the voracious,…
Erica’s Pick of the Week takes you to Jazz-age Mexico — with the God of Death.
While going through some old articles from the Lake County Independent, I came across a very persuasive advertisement for Dr. Pierce’s Pleasant Purgative Pellets, which claimed it would give women the strength to do their patriotic duty during the First World War. Between that and, since my coworker has just finished her amazing rundown of the history…
When Frank B. Lovell took over the F.Z. Kimball & Co. drug store in the 1880’s, he became the head of a business established over a decade earlier. Little did he know this business would still be in operation over 100 years later. Frank B. Lovell was born in 1861 in Onarga, Iroquois County, Illinois,…
Tea Obreht burst on the literary stage in 2011 with her magnificent novel, The Tiger’s Wife. She was hailed by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Fans, including me, eagerly waited for her next book.…
Most people have heard of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but the Great Libertyville Fire of 1895 may not be as familiar. Nearly 125 years ago, a fire raged through central Libertyville destroying an entire business block in a single night. In the hours between August 30 and 31, 1895, cigar maker Max LeBeau…
