The Reporter Gene

Spanning three decades of life experience, "The Reporter Gene" examines childhood, parenthood, loss, and the resonance of place. Readers familiar with the Atlantic states--its cities and deepest rural areas--will recognize the landscape of these works. Nessa Burns Reifsnyder, daughter of a poet and a jazz musician, inherited the "reporter gene" of the title: an unsparing, straightforward storytelling instinct, with flashes of emotional verve befitting an improviser.