Dawn Downey’s second collection of essays is for everyone who savors down-to-earth stories with a twist of wisdom. Deeply honest and deeply personal, her observations are laced with quirky insights and self-deprecating humor. She draws inspiration from the flu, the garden, bad knees and bad TV. She explores larger themes of loss and estrangement, while retaining a youthful outlook on the vagaries of life and aging. Readers will journey from the mundane to the metaphysical. Here’s an author who lets us in on her fear of cows. We follow her quest to learn compassion. We share her desire for peace.

As she does in her spiritual memoir, Stumbling Toward the Buddha, Downey attempts to understand relationships. In Forgive Me, she reflects on the meaning of an insincere apology. ( Sorry you’re inflexible. Sorry you’re mad. Sorry you don’t understand my position. ) In 2015 Dawn-Mobile, she compares her body to a used car. ( I can ill afford the maintenance: gym memberships, yoga classes, chiropractors, therapists. And still, it backfires. ) In Samsara, she aims her wit at envy. ( When an upscale lifestyle magazine featured my chic pal’s Los Angeles home, it turned into a sixteen-page full-color spread of my jealousy. The green-eyed monster drooled all over her Ming porcelain. ) And in Cemetery Song, she has a conversation with her mother, who died in her fifties. You seldom laughed, and now I understand, now that I’m older than you ever got to be. Do you like my hair? )

Dawn Downey’s narratives describe the ties that bind us.