I have been looking into schedules. Even when we read physics, we inquire of each least particle, What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.
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August 1, 2026: Maureen Aitken
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Maureen Aitken’s linked collection, The Patron Saint of Lost Girls, is the kind of book I love to read. Sharp writing, fresh images that allow me to see in a new way, and a varied sentence structure that feels exactly right. Maureen leaps and trusts us to leap with her.
His face was like a catcher’s mitt, warm and beaten. He reminded me of one of those boys who had moved away when I was little, but Paul had returned a man.
I felt as though something enormous had just swept through town. Time seemed to lift, like a needle off an old record. It was June.
And also, even though it’s not a novel (my favorite thing to read!) all the stories take place in Detroit in the 1970s and ’80’s and all are connected by a single character—Mary. Together, these elements give the collection that novel-ish feel.
Mary is the youngest of three, a kid who loves her dog Chip so much, she vows not to have any fun on a family vacation he is not allowed to attend. She’s smart. “Neal leaned over the engine, and the way he wiggled the parts, with dull misunderstanding, made me want to kill him.” Mary knows her limits. “People threw people away. I couldn’t fix that.” She cares about buildings. When she thinks one looks lonely, she leaves her car there and walks home. “When I glanced back, the place looked comforted, like it belonged.” And above all, Mary wants to make her own way in the world.
What I wanted traveled within us and without a name, like a car barreling through the darkness, passing a roadside evangelical travel agent who proclaimed, ‘Screw the maps. The America you knew? That land is gone.’
You can really get a feel for Mary in this bit of dialogue.
I sat in the front row. The judge proceeded with general questions for the group. Had anyone on the jury ever been robbed. I raised my hand.
“Anyone ever had trouble with a drug dealer?” I raised my hand.
“Anyone ever have trouble with a police officer?”
Up went my hand. Of course, I thought. Hasn’t everyone?
“Known an addict?”
Please, I thought, my hand raised again. This was America. Who doesn’t know an addict but the addict himself?
And this is something I especially love about Mary.
The days run so fast together that they collapse on their own. It aches sometimes to see them go, to see what I am and what I still yearn to be.
Finally, a few other sentences I can’t resist mentioning.
For originality in meaning: “What was beautiful knew how to veer on a whim.”
For a combination of discordant sounds and smells that make me pay attention to the moment: “The church bells rang eight times, and the air still languished in gasoline exhaust and sweat.”
For the way the personification evokes the mood: “Everyone in Detroit knew an uncle or a brother who had been laid off by a car company during record profits. In the ’80’s, the entire city sat at kitchen tables trying to figure out how to pay the bills.”
For the way the sentence structure mirrors the content: “When she had to get up, we inflated the mattress. That was all that mattered now. She had to be able to get up. We worked constantly. The bathroom, the bag, the Boost, the Vernors, the ice, the water, the fire. The gifts, the time, which passed so fast, as if it were a conveyor we couldn’t stop.”
The Patron Saint of Lost Girls won the Nilsen Literary Prize for a First Novel and was originally published in 2018 by Southeast Missouri State University Press. It received a starred Kirkus review and the Foreword Review INDIE Gold Prize for General Fiction. It was also a finalist in the Minnesota Book Awards. The collection was reissued in 2025 by Wayne State University Press.
Writing is in Maureen’s blood. “My grandmother wrote a column for a local newspaper and my grandfather was an editor at The Detroit Times. My mother wrote about food.” Maureen started in journalism before moving to Minnesota for graduate school. Her stories have earned a Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant, a Loft Mentor Award, an award from Ireland’s Fish Short Story Prize, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. Maureen has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota, and Hamline University. We met at a Writing by Writers workshop.
Come back on AUGUST 1st to read how MAUREEN AITKEN spends her days.