Melanie Rae Thon Recommends...

“I see a pigeon dying on my porch the day before Christmas, deer up to their ears in snow, my father in his last bed, heart and lungs and liver failing: I am learning how to love; I cannot save them. In the park, a woman drags a drunken man into the grass, kisses her fingers and oh-so-tenderly touches his face before she leaves him. A coyote howls across the arroyo, and in delight, I answer. One-legged Clarence Purdy runs down a ditch to pull a 216-pound stranger out the window of his rolled truck as the battery sparks and gas trickles, drags the stunned man up the bank seconds before flames burst behind them. I don’t know how. I can’t explain it. The photograph of Clarence Purdy fills the front page of the paper, left pant leg split to the knee to expose his prosthesis. Seventy-three years old, this savior. All these images come from my ‘Book of Wonders,’ notebooks I’ve been keeping for more than twenty years. Your book of miracle and mystery can contain anything! Be free! Be joyful! Let your own delight, your awe and sorrow, your love of life, your searing perceptions and silent astonishment guide you.”
—Melanie Rae Thon, author of In This Light (Graywolf Press, 2011)