"Summer Sullivan, the youngest founding member of Elm Creek Quilts, has spent the last two years pursuing a master's degree in history at the University of Chicago. Her unexpected return home to the celebrated quilter's retreat is met with delight but also concern from her mother, Gwen; her best friend, Sarah; master quilter Sylvia; and her other colleagues--and rightly so. Stymied by writer's block, Summer hasn't finished her thesis, and she can't...

Toothy lives in Liam's mouth next to his best friend Fang, but when he falls out and is tucked under Liam's pillow, the Tooth Fairy appears and takes Toothy to the Museum of Lost Teeth and finds a new home where first baby teeth are proudly displayed.

Tyler is in therapy. Katia and Goran are in love. On a summer trip to Zagreb, the couple discover an unusual museum that displays mementos of broken relationships. Inside, Goran stumbles upon an exhibit that seems to be addressed to him, from a girl he met in a Sarajevo refugee camp at age fourteen. What follows is a whirlwind summer of reconnecting with lost pasts: Goran confronts the youth he lost during the Yugoslav Wars, Katia heads to Brazil...

Largely told through techniques of metaphor and symbolism, this work of creative non-fiction, a work of literary narrative, might be more colorfully classified as "Texas Gothic": a boot stompin' trek through a time in Texas where an occasional burr under the saddle was expected, if not overtly sought... a time when life's lessons were often gleaned more through osmosis than the class room text. This insightful book offers the reader a multi-layered...