“The fourth contraction seized her and suddenly she was perspiring. She heard herself cry out and then she heard the children’s voices… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Her husband put his arm across the back of the seat. “Everybody set to go?” he said. He had been too harsh… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“It was simply what you did: you made conversation in elevators, complimented small children in strollers, looked up from your magazine to… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Mary Keane watched her daughter and felt as well the punch and turn of the baby not yet born and saw the… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“He put his hand out to his daughter, pulled her up easily over the edge. And then bent to gather the shoes… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“He crossed the wide breadth of beach, hearing their voices coming to him on the wind before he saw them at the… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“The story she then told was as all attempts at sympathy are: an effort to match in form and size and detail… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“WHEN JOHN AND MARY KEANE said “during the war,” their children imagined the world gone black and white, imagined a hand passing… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Coming,” he cried when the rapping began again, on the heels of a distant roll of thunder, and in the instant before… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“It was as if he stopped time for them two weeks out of every year, cut them off from both the past… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“The children ran ahead. A white trail of sand cut through the scrub pine and the yellowing beach grass, rising across the… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Midwest childhood, a kidney condition that kept him out of the service, a stint at the Navy Yard before the job at… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“She had an image of her unborn child, its head up under her heart, its ear pressed to the wall of her… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Some vestige of his race or of his sex made him think, whenever he looked out across the ocean: As it was before me… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“If you want to see how far we have not come from the cave and the woods, from the lonely and dangerous days of… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“John Keane pressed his chest to the steering wheel as he put the key in the ignition, taking a deep breath as he did,… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“The fourth contraction seized her and suddenly she was perspiring. She heard herself cry out and then she heard the children’s voices like sparks… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“THE TINY SPIDERS that lived in the higher branches of the downed tree (which now meant the branches that lay on the other side… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
What makes a sentence, a phrase, a moment, or a scene delightful? Something about recognizing the truth in it, hearing the music in it,… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Michael had slipped beyond the crest of the dune. Jacob was lying flat out now, on his stomach, his little men all before him,… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Not a soul,” Mary Keane said to her husband, the wind lifting her words, tossing them gently back over her shoulder, the way it… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“There wasn’t a tear to be seen on the faces of the men and women in the street as the two of them walked… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“His love for his children bore down on his heart with the weight of three heavy stones. There were all his unnamed fears for… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
“Mr. Persichetti knew that six weeks before its time and with a good thirty-minute ride to the hospital once the ambulance came (would it… — Alice McDermott Copy Share Image
