“I made cranberry sauce, and when it was done put it into a dark blue bowl for the beautiful contrast. I was thinking, doing this, about the old ways of gratitude: Indians thanking the deer they'd slain, grace before supper, kneeling before bed. I was thinking that gratitude is too much absent in our lives now, and we need it back, even if it only takes the form of acknowledging the blue of a bowl against the red of cranberries.”

American novelist and former registered nurse

Elizabeth Berg is an American novelist and former registered nurse. Her fiction centers on character, family life, and personal change, and it has earned recognition from the American Library Association. Berg is known for novels that pay close attention to everyday relationships and the ways people move through change. Her writing tends to focus on interior life and domestic experience, with an emphasis on how personal and family ties shape a life.