Educated

few minutes, so she sat on a flat red stone and pointed to a sandstone rock formation in the distance, formed of crumbling spire ...

for that final collision. Long before the warriors’ leap it was decided how the women would live and how they would die. By the ...

Then I heard Audrey’s voice. She was calling our names one by one. Then she said, “Everyone’s here except Tara!” I tried to shou ...

epicenter was a small ring with fissures circling outward. The ring was directly in front of the passenger seat. “You okay?” Dad ...

Mother didn’t come out of the basement for a week. Every day the swelling worsened, the black bruises turned blacker. Every nigh ...

5 Honest Dirt The mountain thawed and the Princess appeared on its face, her head brushing the sky. It was Sunday, a month after ...

wisdom is greater than God’s.” He was still grinning. The situation wasn’t serious; he just needed to talk some sense into his s ...

The story of how Tyler decided to leave the mountain is a strange one, full of gaps and twists. It begins with Tyler himself, wi ...

worshipful, but it was also something else, something to do with study, discipline and collaboration. Something I didn’t yet und ...

Mother spent five years sitting with him at the kitchen table every morning, explaining the same sounds again and again, but by ...

Mavis Beacon, which gave lessons on typing. Sometimes, when she was delivering herbs, if we’d finished our chores, Mother would ...

The real challenge was finding time to study. Every morning at seven, my father gathered his sons, divided them into teams and s ...

As spring turned to summer, Dad’s resolve turned to denial—he acted as if the argument were over and he had won. He stopped talk ...

this won’t be worth a thing. People will trade hundred-dollar bills for a roll of toilet paper.” I imagined a world where green ...

but instead I ran, out the back door and up through the hills toward the peak. I ran until the sound of blood pulsing in my ears ...

poured in through gossamer curtains and onto marigold tiles, giving the whole room an amber glow. After Grandma slid the first b ...

moment, perhaps the perspective was his, that of the brother I hated, and loved. Grandma led me into the bathroom and watched as ...

6 Shield and Buckler The winter after Tyler left, Audrey turned fifteen. She picked up her driver’s license from the county cour ...

hand. He was right; it was not as heavy as it looked. Next Dad handed me a dented pipe. “This here’s steel,” he said. We began t ...

and placed on the counter. It looked like a prop from a magic trick. Mother put it on ice and rushed Robert to town so the docto ...