Longreads

I'VE NEVER BEEN MUCH for guidebooks, so when trying to get my bearings in a strange American city, I normally start by asking the cabdriver or hotel clerk some silly question regarding the latest…

5. After Suicides, a Family's Journey Toward GraceJoshua Wolfson | Casper Star-Tribune | Sept. 18, 2011 | 11 minutes (2,808 words)A family copes with the loss of two brothers from suicide: "He…

Frank Bill usually traffics in fiction that hits with the revelatory power of fact—the stories of his debut book, Crimes in Southern Indiana, have the power of bristling frontline reports on the havoc methamphetamines have wreaked on the American heartland. But here Frank steps out from behind his fiction to tell us about a time in southern Indiana when meth was but an exotic treat that came in the mail to only the most enterprising drug dealers. The intervening years would bring all variety of twisted darkness to Corydon, Indiana, but as Frank makes clear here, even in that more innocent time, those looking for trouble—and even those running away from it—had a pretty good chance of finding it.

"Dear Sugar, About eighteen months ago, I got pregnant. In a move that surprised both my boyfriend and me, we decided we wanted to keep the baby. Though the pregnancy was unplanned, we were really excited to become parents and the child was very much loved and wanted. When I was six and a half months pregnant, I miscarried. Since then, I’ve struggled to get out of bed."

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I…