After the death of my sister, I found myself caught up in grief, dashing from one activity to the next to keep my mind occupied. But on my forty-sixth birthday I decided to stop running and start reading. There were obligations I couldn't put on hold—a husband, four kids, three cats, and piles of dirty laundry—but everything else would have to wait.
I devoted myself to reading a book a day: one year of magical reading in which I found joy, healing, and wisdom. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is my story of that year. Weaving together memories from my family’s history with the unforgettable lives of the characters I was reading about, I write about the lessons I found in the books I read, and I make the case -- using my own experiences as illustration -- that a good story can console, inspire, and open our lives to new places and experiences.
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is proof of the all-encompassing power and delight of reading, and homage to the writers who, in writing their books, bring such joy, wisdom, and comfort to the world.
