Words
The word cloud gives an idea of what I've been writing about the last many years, much of it shaped by my work on the U.S.-Mexico border. You can find an archive of my published writing here.
In my first book, Mrs. Hunter's Happy Death (Doubleday, 2006), I told the story of Mary Hunter, a woman who died an extraordinary death in the year 1800, casting her story against the stories of people I had known as a pastor who finished their lives with dignity and grace. You can read more here.
In a forthcoming book for Yale University Press, I will tell an unexpected story of American origins, focused on the ways that people in America's revolutionary generation talked to each other about the prospect of dying for a noble cause.
I know that these interests may appear unrelated, but they don't feel that way to me. How do we think of ourselves as Americans? What are the deep and abiding passions that unite us - and divide us - from one another?
