The Miss Dennis School of Writing and Other Lessons from a Woman's Life

In this collection of her essays and columns, Pulitzer Prize-winning Baltimore Sun journalist Steinbach seeks to "rescue from insignificance some of the small events that make up a life." These pieces thus explore, with quiet grace, the unexpected pleasures that are gleaned from an appreciation of the "ordinary" - a sleeping cat, a blooming garden, a well-cooked meal. Such familiar - even ostensibly mundane - details of our lives, Steinbach maintains, play a far more important part in shaping our identities and our sense of our relationship to the world than do the "exotic encounters" or momentous events to which we attach much significance. Alternately poignant and humorous, sedately contemplative and bristling with emotional energy, Steinbach's various musings on the daily rhythms of her own moods and experiences transform "everyday life" into a rich and meaningful journey.