I am home. for Christmas, on Main Street, at River Lights in Dubuque.

Stop in at River Lights and do all your Christmas shopping this year. This is one of my favorite bookstores in the world. It’s about more than books, just like books are. Find great gift ideas in every corner of the store and enjoy the warm and welcome atmosphere. I am thrilled that I am home. is on the shelves in this place where I feel very much at home. The setting for I am home., this non-fiction tale, is Dubuque, Key West, and many other places in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and across the United States of America. You can also travel to Iceland, France, and Spain within. It’s a story that shows it is possible to go home again, and to leave home again, and to carry it with you always, and have a great time doing it despite all the challenges. You will laugh and you will cry. And maybe even think about things in a different way. It is a gift of light and love, this book, and thus fits with the season.

After you leave the bookstore with all your Christmas shopping in the bag, stop and enjoy other great places nearby like L. May Eatery, Salsa’s Mexican Restaurant , and Jitterz, where I wrote a lot, and had great conversations. I miss all that. I’ll be back.

I am home. as a gift.

Is there someone on your Christmas list who likes to read? Who enjoys true stories? Who loves home, and loves to travel, and wonders about how others live in the world and what freedom costs? Who loves Iowa? Who especially loves the Upper Mississippi Valley of Iowa? And loves and wonders about Spain and Iceland and France? Who loves driving? Who loves rivers, valleys, and being in the great outdoors? Who loves life, family, friends? Who loves to walk, dance, and swim? Who sees beauty everywhere? Who appreciates absurd humor? And sees the humor in even the difficult moments? They will probably also love this book.

It has been called a book about the wideness of love, a book about what it means to be a free spirit in this world, and a book about what it means to be home. It has been called a memoir hiding inside other genres. It has been called amazing, brilliant, heartbreaking, enthralling, relevant, resonant, brave, inspiring, moving, insightful, incisive, beautifully written, and soothing.

If you’ve read and enjoyed it, please spread the word. If you haven’t read it yet, please give it a chance. It would be wonderful if you asked your library to order it.

If I could afford it, I would hand out copies everywhere.

Here, at this desk, looking at this view, I smile thinking about how writing and reading connect me to other souls who are also interested in being as alive as we can be. I imagine these people believe that life is a chance to exalt and contribute.

“They are your contribution to humanity,” a friend said recently when I wondered about the value of my books and the time spent writing them.

Thanks for reading!

Available wherever books are sold, like at River Lights Books in Dubuque.

I am home. in the library.

Sweet news via Chez Soi Press. I love knowing I am home. will be on the shelf in the Iowa City Public Library, one of the many places where I worked on it.

I moved to Iowa City from Chicago with a first draft completed (started in Dubuque and written throughout the Midwest, Iceland, France, and Spain then completed in Chicago on a fine day in May, hours before I did a reading and presentation of Lucy, go see. at the wonderful 3rd Coast Café).

When I left Iowa City nine months later to move to Los Angeles, the fifth, or was it the sixth, or maybe the seventh? draft went with me. Anyway, there were more drafts to come until I finished it there on the Pacific with the Angels. And here I am with the fox in Barcelona. We made it this far home.

Available wherever books are sold.

P.S. – If you have wondered what Chez Soi means, it is French for At home. And it is pronounced shay-swa.

I am home. on the Mississippi.

I am home. resting between tastings amid beauty in a home overlooking a beloved American river in the Upper Mississippi Valley. #goodbooks #bookstagram #bookstoread #bookrecommendation #mississippi #riverlife #beauty #wonderful_places #joy #grief #adventure #travel #iowahomeland #iowa #france #spain #iceland #midwest #midweststories #worldstories #philosophy #love #barcelonalovers

Available in hardcover and paperback wherever books are sold.

I am home. in Helsinki.

I am home. in Helsinki! with Paul who considers it a moving telling with piercing insights and even has a favorite sentence which is also one of mine. He loved the kaleidoscope format. Do you have a favorite sentence? #helsinki #goodbooktoread #greatbook #bookrecommendations #truestory #beauty #wonder #love #joy #sensuality #grief #finland #travel #adventure #home