Book

I didn’t know women could do this. Hell, I didn’t know people could do this. When I first picked up Wild by Cheryl Strayed, I had no real concept of long-distance hiking. I thought of nature as something you visited for a few hours, maybe a weekend if you were adventurous. The idea of walking for months through the wilderness, alone, carrying everything you needed on your back? That was the stuff of movies or, at best, something rugged men did in the 1800s. But here was this woman—Cheryl—who had never even gone on a hike before deciding to …

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Grief isn’t a story. Until it becomes one. There’s grief, and then there’s grief that leaves you gasping for breath. "Little Matches" by Maryanne O’Hara is the latter. It’s a book that doesn’t just tell a story—it sits with you, presses into your chest, and makes itself at home in the quiet spaces of your heart. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t leave you drowning. Instead, it hands you a match in the darkness. Maryanne’s daughter, Caitlin, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at two years old. If you don’t know much about CF, let’s …

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Life has a way of sending curveballs, but few can rival the one thrown at Dr. Thomas Sims in 1971. Just as he was about to begin his pediatric surgical residency, Sims got the kind of letter that could derail even the best-laid plans: a draft notice for Vietnam. Instead of stitching wounds in a battlefield M.A.S.H. unit, Sims was offered a different type of war zone—Nome, Alaska. With his very pregnant wife, young daughter, and a van full of pets, he traded the temperate halls of California hospitals for the bone-chilling barrens of the Alaskan …

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