When her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Catherine Landis set out to do something to protect her own brain. Hoping to avoid a similar fate, she went searching for brain exercises and landed on math. Considering herself innumerate, she was flustered by the mere word. Could she relearn it? Could this source of embarrassment become an opportunity? TWO TRAINS LEAVE THE STATION: A Meditation on Age, Alzheimer's, and Arithmetic, is the story of how Catherine relearned math while grappling with her mother's illness and her own inevitable aging. ..

A PLAGUE OF GODS reimagines classical myths and the Epic of Gilgamesh as stories set in the early months of COVID. Each story contains an essence of the original, offering a mythic framework for this profoundly strange and anxious time. Most are told from the point of view of women who, in the original myths, were reduced to the roles of goddesses, monsters, or beautiful maidens. The themes are eternal: hope, confusion, longing, pride, rage, and death. Everything is changed, and yet, nothing is. ..

With a history of childhood loss and tragedy, Arliss Greene grows up to love his cattle more than his family. The memory of his family's displacement, due to TVA's construction of Norris Dam, stays with him as he struggles to make a living farming. His son Daniel tries to distance himself, but an inexplicable attachment to East Tennessee causes him to return to the hilltop where he grew up. He is shocked and disappointed when his wife, Leda, a city girl, ends up working with Arliss, farming the family land. Decisions are made, with repercussions that reverberate throughout their lives, the lives of their children, and the life of the farm from the 1930s to the b ..

Ruth thinks she has found her ticket out of Tennessee by eloping with a stereo salesman, but soon he gets religion, and Ruth leaves. When she faints in a North Carolina five-and-dime, Rose, a fiesty elderly reporter, rescues her, beginning a friendship stronger than family ties. With spirited humor and empathy, Landis intertwines the stories of Rose, who is in denial of her terminal illness, and Ruth, who posesses the energy of Rose in her younger days. ..