If you’ve read Glenn McCarty’s The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson, you’ve heard about US Marshall Dead-Eye Dan. And if you’ve read McCarty’s Junction Tales, you’ve met Dan face-to-face. (For the record, I highly recommend that you do both of those things.) But Dead-Eye Dan and the Cimarron Kid dives deeper into the world of Tumbleweed and tells the […]

“It was a dark and stormy night.” Everyone knows that cliché’d opening sentence, but I’ve always kind of enjoyed it. Cliches generally exist because they’re somewhat effective at what they’re trying to do, and therefore get overused. And a storm really is a great way to start a story! Storms are dynamic and interesting; they […]

Recently our family took a field trip to the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. COVID restrictions kept us away for over two years, and as we wandered through the hushed galleries I wondered if my kids would remember anything from our previous visits. Predictably, their memory of the 18th century American furniture proved spotty. […]

“We’re meeting in the office after the service, right?” This from an elder who caught up with me before church. Ah! Were we? I had lost the thread of an email exchange between our family and our church leadership, and—I’m not proud of it—completely forgotten that today was the day our youngest daughter had her […]

I’m no stranger to George MacDonald. In fact, I would say I often feel like his welcome companion when I’m immersed in his fiction. A Quiet Neighborhood, Castle Warlock, or Sir Gibbie are places I’ve been to, and people I’ve visited in my imagination. But MacDonald also wrote a number of essays commenting on the […]