These powerful essays share critical moments of a writer's life: scenes from sixty years of passionate married love; suicides faced and suicide contemplated; trauma at the DMV; a night lost searching for a harpsichord in the mountains of Florence, Italy; the tale of a beloved cousin whose plane is shot down by Japanese Zeros; and a precious friendship between two women writers derailed by the poisons of religion and politics. In the titular essay (included in
Best American Essays 2023
) a food bank, assuaging the pandemic's terrors with gifts of food and prayers, becomes a portal for intimate confidences entrusted to us by a voice of unspoiled authenticity and perennial vigor.