Goshen is a city in and the county seat of Elkhart County, Indiana, United States. It is the smaller of the two principal cities of the Elkhart–Goshen Metropolitan Statistical Area, which in turn is part of the South Bend–Elkhart–Mishawaka Combined Statistical Area.  It is located in the northern part of Indiana near the Michigan border, in a region known as Michiana.  Goshen is located 10 miles southeast of Elkhart, 25 miles southeast of South Bend, 120 miles east of Chicago, and 150 miles north of Indianapolis.  The population of Goshen was 34,517 at the 2020 census.  The city is known as a prominent recreational vehicle and accessories manufacturing center, the home of Goshen College, a small Mennonite liberal arts college, and the Elkhart County 4-H Fair, one of the largest county fairs in the United States.  The Elkhart County Courthouse, Fort Wayne Street Bridge, Goshen Carnegie Public Library, Goshen Historic District, William N. Violett House, and Violett-Martin House and Gardens are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goshen,_Indiana  The City of Goshen, Indiana, also known as “The Maple City.”    

Yaa Gyasi (born 1989) is a Ghanaian-American novelist.  Her work, most notably her 2016 debut novel Homegoing and her 2020 novel Transcendent Kingdom, features themes of lineage, generational trauma, and Black and African identities.  At the age of 26, Gyasi won the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for Best First Book, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honors for 2016 and the 2017 American Book Award.  She was awarded a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature in 2020.  Gyasi earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, a creative writing program at the University of Iowa.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaa_Gyasi   

Here's a quote from Elizabeth Strout's "The Burgess Boys" that I thought you might like:  "Bob was not a young man, and he knew about loss.  He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of release."  Thank you, Muse reader!   

Cate Tiernan (born 1961) is the pen name of Gabrielle Charbonnet, an American author.  Writing as Cate Tiernan, she is best known for her Sweep series, which follows the Wiccan adventures of a cast of high school students.  The stories are sold as the Wicca series in the UK, Belgium, The Netherlands and Australia, and as White Magic (Magie Blanche) in Italy and France.  Under her own name, she is chiefly known for children's books in the Princess, American Gold Gymnasts, and Disney Girls series.  In 2008 and 2009, Charbonnet collaborated with author James Patterson on two "young adult" novels, Sundays at Tiffany's and Witch & Wizard.   She began her college education at New York University studying writing and Russian language and literature, then transferred to Loyola University in New Orleans, where she graduated with a degree in Russian.  She began her career as an assistant to the head of the Juvenile Audio and Video department at Random House in New York City, where she wrote her first children's books.  She also participated in the editing of The Secret Circle by L.J. Smith during this period.   After eight years in New York, Charbonnet and her husband moved back to New Orleans, where they began a family (two children) and she embarked on her Sweep series.  While not a Wiccan herself, she asserts that she "can really relate to Wicca", and appreciates its "woman-centeredness and its essentially female identity."   After five years in New Orleans, Charbonnet moved to Durham, North Carolina, where she now lives with her husband Paul, two children, two stepsons, a poodle, and "an unfortunate number of cats."   Charbonnet has written about 75 books under her own name, her pseudonym Cate Tiernan, and miscellaneous other pen names as a ghost writer.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cate_Tiernan   

VE Day  proper noun

Short for Victory in Europe Day:  the date 8 May 1945 when Germany unconditionally surrendered its armed forces to the Allies, bringing World War II to an end; and each anniversary commemorating that date.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/VE_Day#English   

http://librariansmuseblogspot.com  Issue 2940  May 8, 2025