Anne Lamott was a daydreamer in school. "It's how novels get started: You wonder," she said during a reading at my local independent bookstore last month. On tour to promote her eighth novel,
Imperfect Birds, the third in a trilogy including
Rosie and
Crooked Little Heart, Lamott spoke to a packed room about "how we come through our survivable losses" -- substance abuse, perfectionism, adolescence -- and how these themes infuse her stories.
