A warm tapestry of stories highlighting connection, community, and the courage it takes to live with an open heart.
A veteran journalist explores love’s many forms through intimate conversations conducted in the small coastal town of Carmel, California.
Drawing on decades of experience asking deeply human questions during professional interviews, van Diggelen displays a gift for turning everyday encounters in her hometown into soulful moments of connection and learning. Each chapter unfolds as a conversation—sometimes playful and intimate, sometimes raw and vulnerable—in which ordinary lives reveal extraordinary reckonings with love, loss, desire, betrayal, grief, faith, aging, and resilience. The subjects come from diverse backgrounds and walks of life; they include a house cleaner from Peru (“Alicia sees cleaning as a gift of love in serving others”), a Syrian immigrant restaurateur (“You have to feelwith others”), a woman seduced by a death row prisoner (“I believed in his innocence”), and a trans woman who shines as a drag performer (“I enjoyed the attention on stage so much, I decided to take part myself”). Instead of building a prescriptive argument or larger narrative from these stories, the author illustrates the ways in which love is a lived and varied practice that is discovered and rediscovered, sustained through hardship, and expressed through art, music, caregiving, sexuality, ritual, and restraint. Van Diggelen weaves her own life experiences into these encounters, demonstrating how the love in our own lives can take new shapes when we listen and connect with our neighbors, friends, and even strangers. The backdrop of Carmel is the connective tissue in this book, serving as a reminder that profound human stories are quietly unfolding everywhere, just beyond our front doors. The author’s deeply absorbing prose honors the complexity of real, meaningful life stories, invites empathy for those around us, and affirms that love, with all its imperfections, remains a vital and animating force in our lives.
A warm tapestry of stories highlighting connection, community, and the courage it takes to live with an open heart.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9798886799705
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Luminare Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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