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About Kristen Carson

Kristen Carson was born in Idaho. She has lived in Utah, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania. She currently resides near Indianapolis. She and her husband are the parents of four adult children. Carson's stories and articles have appeared in Chicago Parent, Indianapolis Monthly, and Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought.
21 02, 2021

Pfizer Man

By |2021-02-21T18:49:53-05:00February 21st, 2021|good nonfiction|0 Comments

If you want to be the most popular guy at happy hour, you might try what Jamie Reidy did: become a Viagra rep. We’ll get back to the little blue pills in a minute. In his memoir, Hard Sell, Jamie lands in pharmaceutical-world after his discharge from the military. In fact, working for Pfizer resembles military life more than Jamie expected. His “class” of [...]

14 02, 2021

This is the Worst It’s Ever Been?

By |2021-02-14T19:33:52-05:00February 14th, 2021|good nonfiction|0 Comments

The summer of 2020 was a season of racial repentance. Or, at least it was supposed to be. White people like myself were supposed to kneel, to post creeds about learning and trying harder and looking inward to see where our poisons lurked. Surely they were in there somewhere. I’m not sure I’ll ever get around to all that. For one thing, the fever [...]

24 01, 2021

Chicken Divan — Yummy!

By |2021-01-24T19:34:53-05:00January 24th, 2021|main dishes|0 Comments

This recipe for Chicken Divan with Rice comes from Managing Your Meals by Winnifred Jardine. I bought the cookbook when I was halfway through having children, and used it enough to stain half the pages, as well as fray them at their spiral binding.  I've made slight adaptations. 5 chicken breast halves (about 25 oz.) 1 cup water 1 bay leaf 1 [...]

17 01, 2021

Let’s Check in on the Stethoscope Warriors

By |2021-01-17T21:10:15-05:00January 17th, 2021|good nonfiction|0 Comments

Whatever your job is, you might be glad you don’t work the emergency room after reading Mark Brown’s Emergency!: True Stories from the Nation’s ERs. Brown collected anecdotes from a few dozen stethoscope warriors. (This book is twenty-five years old.) The readers gets to peek into this horror- and humor-filled world, where the patients arrive beaten, tossed, unresponsive, panicked, maybe in the arms of [...]

3 01, 2021

The Schoolmaster in the Provinces

By |2021-01-03T17:57:53-05:00January 3rd, 2021|good fiction|1 Comment

May I recommend to you Mr. Joe Lunn, the schoolmaster at the center of William Cooper’s novel, Scenes from Provincial Life. Joe is a lovable laggard, always looking to get out of any actual work in that schoolroom. (You might learn his tricks for keeping teenage boys busy, leaving their master free to contemplate the plot of his next novel.) The bright spot in [...]

27 12, 2020

Loopy but Likable

By |2020-12-27T17:50:49-05:00December 27th, 2020|good fiction|0 Comments

It all begins with a mysterious envelope handed to Ricky Rice, bus station janitor. There’s a note inside: “You made a promise in Cedar Rapids in 2002. Time to honor it.” There’s also a bus ticket to Vermont. Ricky, the protagonist of Victor LaValle’s Big Machine, has little to lose. And you know he can get to a bus without any trouble at all. [...]

13 12, 2020

A Safe Trip Back to High School

By |2020-12-13T20:02:28-05:00December 13th, 2020|good fiction|0 Comments

It’s time for a light and airy story, don’t you think? Tell Me Three Things, by Julie Buxbaum, qualifies, even if its heroine, Jessie Holmes, has just escaped a rough year or two. By the time we meet her, she’s lost her mom to cancer. Her father remarries, one of those meet-online, get-hitched-fast things, and Jessie finds herself leaving Chicago behind, landing in the [...]

6 12, 2020

Darkness at Whenever

By |2020-12-06T19:39:41-05:00December 6th, 2020|good fiction, Uncategorized|0 Comments

In Arthur Koestler’s novel, Darkness at Noon, Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov paces in his Soviet prison cell awaiting his “liquidation.” As he habitually wiped his pince-nez clean, I read with a restlessness that most likely blocked me from picking up the more intricate plot points. Why do you sit here with a book? Why don’t you do something to push back our own Darkness at [...]

29 11, 2020

What?! Those Cosmo Stories Aren’t True??

By |2020-11-29T20:32:35-05:00November 29th, 2020|good nonfiction|0 Comments

Get in on the ground floor, sister. Born in January, 1946, this is exactly what Sue Ellen Browder, author of Subverted, did. That birthdate placed her at the headwaters of the Baby Boom, handing her the all the Baby-Boom benefits. You know, the sexual revolution, feminism, abortion. It’s also the memoir of a small-town girl with big-city dreams. Browder stood at the magazine racks [...]

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