Just a Dropped Stitch is a memoir told in interlocking short stories. It's a family photo album; each snapshot tells a mini-story. You're sure you understand what you're seeing, but it's not until you've finished ipping through the entire album that you develop an intimate sense of who this family is. You thought you knew them, understood all the subtleties and dynamics, but, change the angle, soften the focus, ip the page; there's a different story. Jesse, the narrator, is on a search. She's trying to identify the ""dropped stitches"" in her own life, to name them, and reknit them into a...

In 2004, Laurie Levinger left her home in Vermont for Guatemala, where she planned to teach English to Maya university students. But on the first day
of class, Levinger became the student instead of the teacher when a young man named Fernando introduced himself by saying, ""My father was killed
when I was four months old. I am a survivor of the Guatemala civil war.""

Shocked, Levingers first thought was, ""What war?""

Beginning in 1960, fighting between the Guatemalan military and guerrilla fighters raged across this Central American country. By 1980, this violence--which began with a...