Marcos stared at the long, slender neck sparkling in the sinking Casma sun, and he couldn’t help but marvel at the animal.  Even tied by one leg, his gamecock was as graceful as any he’d ever seen, thrusting his head out with every step as if to announce his authority, dipping down to peck [...]

        I’ve been back home two weeks, and as I look out a corner window I still can’t get over how much the mountains east of town mirror the cracking peaks circling Kabul.  It’s early summer warm in the carpeted chapel.  My youngest daughter Hailey moans frustration, and I bend over Elsa and forcefully whisper, “Don’t [...]

         They heaved the two chairs off the back of the truck and carried them into the living room.  Just the chairs alone filled up the space and David wondered how they would place the couch so there would be room to walk from the front door to the small, lightless kitchen at the back.  [...]

For at least 1500 years, clans of reindeer-herding and -following people roamed up and down the Yamal peninsula of northwestern Siberia, relatively free from intrusions by Europeans and the Russian military. Late in the Stalin era, however, the Soviet government began a program of forcibly removing the children and taking them to coastal boarding schools [...]