But Still They Sing

From the award-winning author of the North of the Tension Line series comes a timely, heartfelt collection of essays.

In the lyrical prose style familiar to her readers, author J.F. Riordan records a natural world minutely observed. From an examination of life's fragility via a bathtub spider, to a tree-borne cluster of raccoons huddled together in a polar vortex, the essays capture the peculiar isolation, focus, and intensity of the pandemic lockdown, while marking the contrast of nature’s ruthlessness with human suffering. 

"Our life’s landscape isn’t geographical. It’s human. When you are young, life is an endless horizon of years ahead. It’s hard to realize how fast time goes, and how quickly the people we assume will always be here can suddenly be gone, changing the world forever. It’s easy to allow the demands of every day to take up our energy and our hours. But in this, in every day, we have the essence of our lives. Our lives are only time, and, however far off the horizon seems, finite."

Deeply insightful and personal, by turns soulful and humorous, But Still They Sing belongs at the bedside of anyone in search of the comfort and companionship of a humane voice.

J.F. Riordan was born in New Jersey and first moved to Michigan, then Wisconsin as a child. At the age of 14 she decided to become an opera singer, and was fortunate in the aftermath to have been able to sing. At 16, after two years of high school, she went to the University of New Mexico to study voice, continued her music studies in Chicago and Milwaukee, and ultimately became a professional singer. Homesick after years of travel, she came home to the Midwest, finished her college degree, and became certified to teach high school. She taught for three years in the inner city before taking a position as a program officer for a foundation. She lives in exile from Washington Island with her husband and two dogs.