September 20, 2026
Second Chances in Adult Coming-of-Age Fiction
A second chance is not a return to the first. We cannot step back into the moment before the mistake, the betrayal, or the door closing behind us. Even when we are...
Read the articleThe Road to Athens Journal
The Road to Athens Journal
Explore the themes and world behind The Road to Athens: coming of age after eighteen, college life in 1988, friendship, accountability, redemption, and second chances.
September 19, 2026
Accountability
Accountability begins where the explanation ends. There are always reasons for what we did. We were afraid. We were tired. We did not know better. Someone hurt us first. The timing was...
Read the articleSeptember 18, 2026
Looking Forward
Looking forward is an act of imagination. The past gives us evidence. It offers names, dates, photographs, and scars. We can point to what happened and explain how it changed us. The...
Read the articleSeptember 17, 2026
Perspective
From the middle of a storm, weather is the whole world. There is no horizon, only what is falling around us. We cannot see the road behind or the clearing ahead. We...
Read the articleSeptember 16, 2026
The Aftermath
The aftermath is quieter than the breaking. There is no thunder when the shock wears off. No music rises as we survey what remains. The people who rushed toward us in the...
Read the articleSeptember 15, 2026
Goodbye
Goodbye is one of the shortest words in the English language. It can end a telephone call, a friendship, a relationship, or an entire version of the future. Sometimes it is spoken...
Read the articleSeptember 14, 2026
The Call
Some conversations divide a life into before and after. In The Road to Athens, one of those conversations happens over the telephone. There is no screen to hide behind. No carefully edited...
Read the articleSeptember 13, 2026
Late
There is a moment after every serious mistake when the truth becomes unavoidable. The choice has already been made. Someone has already been hurt. The life that existed before cannot be recovered...
Read the articleSeptember 12, 2026
Borrowed Time
We speak of time as if it belongs to us. My morning. My weekend. My five-year plan. We save time, spend it, waste it, and guard it from anyone who might ask...
Read the articleSeptember 11, 2026
The Deadline
Today, we remember September 11, 2001. We honor the lives taken, the families who carried an absence into every year that followed, the survivors who endured what no one should have had...
Read the articleSeptember 10, 2026
New Beginnings in 1988: College, Friendship, and Second Chances
New beginnings rarely feel new. They arrive carrying boxes from the old life: habits we have not broken, questions we have not answered, names that still catch in our throats. We cross...
Read the article
September 09, 2026
Consequences in Coming-of-Age Fiction: When Freedom Requires Accountability
Consequences are rarely as clean as the stories we tell about them. We like to imagine a straight line: a choice, an outcome, a lesson. Do this and that will happen. Make...
Read the article