Stories and the Lives They Save

Stories and the Lives They Save explores the idea that the very stories we share and receive are as essential to our survival as food, water, and shelter.  They help us make sense of our world.  They save our lives.  This epiphany served as the catalyst for The Meadow.  The novel grew out of my desire to voice recurring themes from my scholarship and teaching, themes that writers, scholars, and healers of every stripe have explored for millennia: psychologist Jonathan Shay treats veterans’ psychological injuries by creating safe communities where their stories can both be told and heard; writer/director/translator Bryan Doerries revisits the classics of Sophocles and Aeschylus, recasting their works as essential to healing moral injury.  Novelist Tim O’Brien’s body of work takes up both of these strands while exploring the idea that stories save not only the survivors of armed conflict, but the very frameworks within which these men and women function—their families and friends, their communities and nations.  And these are the reasons Scott writes.  He wants stomachs to believe and stories to save lives. Stories and the Lives They Save will briefly address these ideas prior to reading an excerpt from The Meadow.