The boldness and utter callousness [of] ... their criminal activities seems to have been equalled only by the stupidity of ... their victims.”
The midwife—known to all as Auntie Suzy—was a “smiling buddha” with a waddling gait, who kept a secret vial stashed in her apron pocket. She bustled through the village, poking her nose into her neighborwomen’s troubled lives, whispered “Why are you bothering with him? I have a way …”
Patti McCracken is an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in Smithsonian, Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Guardian, and numerous other publications. She was formerly on staff at the foreign/national desk of the Chicago Tribune and was twice a Knight International Press Fellow.
After nearly two decades in Europe, McCracken now resides on Martha’s Vineyard.
BOB ECKSTEIN, MARTINUS BOOKSTORE IN BRATISLAVA, DREAM DRIVING
Back in — 2014? 2015? — two dear friends of mine put me in touch with a dear friend of their’s, New Yorker cartoonist and snowman expert Bob Eckstein, who was putting together a book on the world’s greatest bookstores, which he would title “The World’s Greatest Bookstores.”
Read MoreSHAKING THE KARDOS FAMILY TREE
One day in the archives, my assistant and I came across a letter.
Read MoreJACK MACCORMAC:
"ACCUSTOMED TO THE UNACCUSTOMED"
When I first set out to write The Angel Makers, there was going to be a lot more Jazz Age journalism, and therefore a lot more of Jack MacCormac.
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