Geoffrey S. Fletcher

'Precious' is strangely uplifting. It goes down into the valley but it also goes to the mountain tops. A lot of difficult realities are explored in 'Precious,' but the peaks make the valleys and the valleys make the peaks.

In these times of stress, snark, division and despair, I still suspect that two of the most important features we possess are imagination and a capacity for goodness. Those are qualities for which we will be remembered most fondly.

I had an instinctive feeling that the people who have little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way... so I wrote in a plain, common-sense way on the things that concerned our people.