I’m reading a solid Vermont novel — Ruth Porter’s Unexpected Grace. Porter’s book focuses on everyday people and actions: a woman weeding her flowerbed before a lung biopsy, an older woman traveling on a train, families who care about each other, sometimes awkwardly as families can be.

At a reading a fairly well-known Vermont author gave recently at the local bookstore,  a nonfiction writer in the audience asked why she wrote fiction. The possibilities, he commented, seem endless.

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Fiction reflects life, and those choices are one of the things I find most interesting about fiction. Which way will the woman drinking diet Pepsi turn? How will her marriage weather the loss of her husband’s job?

“….I was just thinking it would be nice if the stars were aligned in my favor. There is magic and mystery in the world. It’s all around us.” She managed to get it out before she had to cough again.