Stephen Minot

Hannah Farr was 16 the spring she left home to live with a strange man. Her two older brothers still living at home had been ordered to carry her little trunk down the stairs and out to Mr. Bates' buckboard. Her mother kissed her briefly in the fro [...]

You have been, over the centuries, quite vocal. And much of this verbalizing has been articulate, even eloquent. We atheists, on the other hand, have been relatively taciturn and deficient in eloquence. We've produced no parables or psalms, no cant [...]

Hannah, 91, sees a young boy, about four, burst into the kitchen, peel off his jacket, snow and ice flying every which way, and clomp up to his room. He doesn't say a word to her. Not a word. She feels a pang, a sense of loss. It's as if he is only [...]

It is Thursday, the 23rd, and Chester Kemp is having a lapse of memory. Thursday, the 23rd, and he is on Flight 652. Flight 652, Swissair for. . . . He has the window seat. Below him, gray fields, small towns. Anonymous towns. Patches of snow [...]