"I wish my younger sister would visit me," the woman I was interviewing said. "We see each other pretty often," she explained. "She lives near my parents, so I always visit her when I visit them. But I want her to see where I live and where I work, so...

I was in the NPR studios in Washington, DC, winding down a half-hour interview for a segment that would run on Morning Edition. Since the topic was my new book, You Were Always Mom's Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives, the interviewer, Susan Stamberg, called my two sisters, to...

Cecile stood up, straightened her back, and stretched her arms out wide, dramatizing how her older sister had always protected her. Then she said: "Sometimes when we talk on the phone, we run out of things to say, but we don't hang up. We put the phones down but keep...