“Like other places with low vaccination rates, there is a deep distrust of authority that exists among those at the Lake of the Ozarks. Politicians have agendas, the press loves controversy, even data can’t be believed. Some here cast hospitalization spikes as fictionalized. Others spin conspiracy theories about microchips.”

“Along with fire, my brother loved the sound of breaking glass. He seemed to enjoy chaos in all forms. I thought it was unfair that I had to be my brother’s keeper. I just wanted to be the younger brother in a normal family, and Jon, I thought, was keeping us from being normal.”

“The discovery of hundreds of Indigenous children’s remains in the spring was particularly hard for me—because I knew I could have been one of them. How I made it through Canada’s residential school system.”

“If you told somebody 26 kids went missing, the most ever in America, that somebody would likely assume they were dead. But they’d survived! All of them! Many potlucks would ensue.”

“The death of the woman he loved was too much to bear. Could a mysterious website allow him to speak with her once more?”

“Wes starring in films that have nothing to do with Native American heritage is something we acutely desire: to be allowed to play parts without having to authenticate our realness as Indians.”

“Did a Good Internet ever even exist, or am I just nostalgic for my youth?”

“When my daughter’s delivery went off the script I had imagined, it made me wonder about what we ask from our birth stories.”

“Is this the end for Muslims in India?”

“The same ingredients are a part of all of us. They’re just shaped and distributed differently.”