Proud, industrious, creative, generous, and patriotic-that's the spirit of America! In this collection of 101 stories about the spirit of America and what makes our country great, you'll read about: America's heroes-service members, military families, veterans, and first responders 9/11 fifteen years later-the families, the rescuers, the air traffic controllers who were on duty, the spirit of a united nation in the days that followed Our vast and beautiful land-from beaches to mountains, from tropics to desert Traditions-from baseball to apple pie to parades to our national parks American ingenuity, from the space program to made-in-America to our can-do attitude Our generosity and compassion- we are a nation of helping hands Our diversity and our proud new citizens The red, white, and blue-our flag and what it means to us

A bright June day. A split-second distraction. A family forever changed. Life is good for Maura Corrigan. Married to her college sweetheart, Pete, raising three young kids with her parents nearby in her peaceful Chicago suburb, her world is secure. Then one day, in a single turn of fate, that entire world comes crashing down and everything that she thought she knew changes. Maura must learn to move forward with the weight of grief and the crushing guilt of an unforgivable secret. Pete senses a gap growing between him and his wife but finds it easier to escape to the bar with his friends than face the flaws in his marriage. Meanwhile, Maura's parents are dealing with the fault lines in their own marriage. Charismatic Roger, who at sixty-five, is still chasing the next business deal and Margaret, a pragmatic and proud homemaker, have been married for four decades, seemingly happily. But the truth is more complicated. Like Maura, Roger has secrets of his own and when his deceptions and weaknesses are exposed, Margaret's love and loyalty face the ultimate test."Those We Love Most" chronicles how these unforgettable characters confront their choices, examine their mistakes, fight for their most valuable relationships, and ultimately find their way back to each other. It takes us deep into the heart of what makes families and marriages tick and explores a fundamental question: when the ties that bind us to those we love are strained or broken, how do we pick up the pieces? Deeply penetrating and brimming with emotional insight, this engrossing family drama heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

"An inspiring, intimate memoir about faith, resilience and the tenacity of love."--People

"In this emotional tale, a young couple see their lives changed in the blink of an eye--and learn to find love again."--US Weekly

Five months pregnant, on a flight to their "babymoon," Allison Pataki turned to her husband when he asked if his eye looked strange and watched him suddenly lose consciousness. After an emergency landing, she discovered that Dave--a healthy thirty-year-old athlete and surgical resident--had suffered a rare and life-threatening stroke. Next thing Allison knew, she was sitting alone in the ER in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to hear if her husband would survive the night.

When Dave woke up, he could not carry memories from hour to hour, much less from one day to the next. Allison had lost the Dave she knew and loved when he lost consciousness on the plane. Within a few months, she found herself caring for both a newborn and a sick husband, struggling with the fear of what was to come.

As a way to make sense of the pain and chaos of their new reality, Allison started to write daily letters to Dave. Not only would she work to make sense of the unfathomable experiences unfolding around her, but her letters would provide Dave with the memories he could not make on his own. She was writing to preserve their past, protect their present, and fight for their future. Those letters became the foundation of this beautiful, intimate memoir. And in the process, she fell in love with her husband all over again.

This is a manifesto for living, an ultimately uplifting story about the transformative power of faith and resilience. It's a tale of a man's turbulent road to recovery, the shifting nature of marriage, and the struggle of loving through pain and finding joy in the broken places.