His heart cracked open and flooded all the space around it.

You wanted to believe that getting older, growing up, would change everything, transform you into the amazing person you were meant to be. But what if it didn’t? What if you had to stay you...

We were afraid of so many things: Of our children, who lived in their own world of casually lurid pleasures, zombies and cartoon killers and thuggish music. Of our neighbors, who were buying gold and...