Author: Jon Lurie

  • The Voyage of the Heath Ledger

    On June 17, 2006, we quietly paddled the Heath Ledger across the Canadian border. We hadn’t exactly planned to sneak into Canada. Joe and I were on a mission—to reach Hudson Bay by canoe, still hundreds of miles to the northeast—and as we approached the border we realized that interactions with government officials might endanger…

  • Magical Thinker

    Any good businessperson knows that if you want to cultivate a certain type of clientele, you meet with them on their own turf. Jodi Livon, a psychic medium who has counseled movers and shakers in the corporate world for the past twenty-five years, offices not in some shabby storefront, but at The Atria, a plush…

  • The World’s Toughest Indian

    When Sherman Alexie came to town last month to promote Flight, a novel in which a teenager nicknamed Zits is driven to the verge of committing mass murder, one of his intentions was to continue his fight with author and University of Minnesota English professor David Treuer. Alexie’s smile was ever-present throughout our interview in…

  • The Mystery of the Girl Who Didn’t Care

    I raised three daughters who spent their childhoods reading Harry Potter. So I had never encountered the Nancy Drew mysteries until Malcolm, my seven-year-old son, received a copy of one in a bookstore earlier this year. Apparently, Nancy Drew wasn’t selling, so to spark interest the store was giving away The Secret of the Old…

  • Dakota Diaspora

    Twenty-eight-year-old identical twins Kate and Carly Beane share similarly striking features—demure brown eyes and hair, high cheek bones, and quick smiles that precede regular bouts of easy, endearing laughter. Both say they are now content with their lives, a state of being that had eluded them until a few years ago, when they decided to…

  • Sherman Alexie

    Sherman Alexie was born hydrocephalic, and doctors predicted he would suffer severe retardation. However, the very opposite occurred; he showed signs of prodigy, devouring novels by age five. Still, he endured effects of his condition—seizures and bed-wetting—and was subject to bullying on the Spokane Reservation where he grew up. In his new novel Flight (Alexie’s…