“Humans. For the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures,” (Van Pelt 350). Tova Sullivan is a woman who knows how to cope. Thirty-years ago her eighteen-year-old son Erik vanished on a boat in Puget Sound, and only a few years ago her husband Will died of cancer. …
“lost and alone,/wandering./i swill back the pain; it burns and it belches/rage and despair/leaving only a windigo/who cannibalizes himself,” (Thistle, 157, “Windigo”). Jesse Thistle recounts his journey of recovery from drug-addiction. He remembers his brief time in the foster-care system with his brothers, moving to Ontario with his paternal grandparents, until he finds himself homeless. …
“I need to write the next best thing. And then another. Otherwise the sales will whittle down, and people will stop reading my work, and everyone will forget about me…And then when I die, I won’t have left any mark on teh world. It’ll be like I was never here at all,” (Kuang 259). June …
“You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things…we always have a choice. All of us,” (Stedman). Returning home from the First World War, Tom Sherbourne takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, an isolated island …
Sarah O'Connor 