Former Masthead owner Reade Brower retained ownership of several weeklies that weren’t part of the deal. The National Trust for Local News, which already owns two dozen newspapers in Colorado, is expanding its portfolio through the purchase of five daily newspapers and 17 weekly newspapers that were part of Masthead Maine. Traveling with Spirits makes you think, makes you laugh and the pleasure of it will be with you for a long time.” - Margaret-Love Denman, Daily, Before Your Eyes “Alive with details, wrought with questions of belief, and riven with the tension of wanting to know where she fits in the world, Monica’s story is compelling and vivid.” - Bret Lott, author of Jewel Read on.PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - With advertising shrinking and newspapers vanishing, Maine’s largest newspaper group became the latest to try a nonprofit model with the completion of the sale of more than 20 daily and weekly newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald. Neither Miner nor her characters are content with easy answers, but tackle them head-on, whether it be the nature of faith, the strictures placed on the clinic by the church, the dangerous territory of marriage within different cultures to the question of the very presence of Westerners in the third world. The subtlety and complexity with which Miner treats religion, healthcare, and the complications of First World aid in a postcolonial world are deeply impressive.” - Valerie Sayers, author of The Powers “In Traveling With Spirits, Miner’s deft hand moves the reader from a clinic in Minneapolis to a Catholic medical mission in Uttar Pradesh, with lush prose and razor-sharp insight into the struggles and questions that reside in both places and in our common humanity. I was immediately absorbed by the novel and found it completely engaging. The result is a vibrant portrait of Monica Murphy, physician of body and her own soul. Valerie Miner is brave enough to ask tough questions about religion, politics, and international aid, generous enough to acknowledge human goodness alongside human failings. “ Traveling with Spirits is a provocative, engaging odyssey through northern India and the U.S. The characters’ conflicts reveal how family and friendships are enriched by differences.” The characters in these stories live and travel in Tunisia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Turkey, France, and the United States and consider their individual agency in both local and global contexts. “Compelling and vivid, the stories in Bread and Salt use the metaphor of salvage to consider the reclamation of the natural environment, human relationships, and material objects. Most of them made me think and none of them gave me nightmares.” I read them over a period of several weeks at the end of the day. I found the stories relatable and engaging. The point of view characters are all women, usually academics or creatives. The writing quality is excellent, creating memorable images of places and cuisine. Most of the stories could be called literary fiction, but a few included thriller-esque elements, and one (“Quiet as the Moon”) edged up to fantasy. All of them were engaging, but I particularly enjoyed “Iconoclast” and “Bread and Salt,” for their (to me) exotic locations, Turkey and Tunisia respectively. “A wide-ranging collection of stories around the themes of family, relationships, travel, and women’s life choices. Goodreads, 17 April 2021, Audrey Driscoll,
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