Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Suzanne Simard, more... 13 April, 2026

books, literature & art that invite us to live compassionately

Apr 13, 2026

The Game That You Learnt From the Morning (Broken Barns Series)
Amanda Evanston, 2026

“Broken Barns is a collection of Midwestern landscapes—fields, skies, and small collapsing barns standing as quiet witnesses to the passage of time. These are not polite pastoral scenes, but places with backbone and memory, places where the land itself takes center stage. Each weathered structure hints at the systems and sanctuaries once built with conviction—governments, churches, families, committees—now trembling under their own weight.”

“Yet the fields remain steady. Soil stays faithful. It makes room for roots, insists on new growth, and waits patiently for rain and tending hands. Midwesterners have long romanticized farming because it offers a kind of creation story: ordinary people coaxing life from stubborn ground with faith, labor, and a hope that the weather cooperates. Barns may lean and fall, but when the soil is sound, resilience rises. Beauty come from broken places—it always has.” - Amanda Evanston

***See if you can spot the tiny barn in this piece!***

[ READ the full poem here]

The author of Finding the Mother Tree and scientist who pioneered the concept of sophisticated communication between trees, Suzanne Simard now offers a powerful vision for saving our forests based on nature’s deep-rooted cycles of renewal.

"A masterclass on the inner workings of forests. . . . This is science as an act of love for the world.” —Zoë Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters

[ READ the Publishers Weekly Review of this book ]

[By Colin Dwyer, via NPR] “April may well be "the cruelest month," as T.S. Eliot famously opined — and even a five-minute doomscroll makes it tough to deny that cruelty is riding at anything but record levels lately. But remember you do have an alternative to doomscrolling, one that's been around much longer: cracking open a book — or doomflipping, I suppose you could call it…”