Her many dreadlocks were pulled into a haphazard swirled top notch and as she walked my way, I saw she had a New York Times in one hand and a large chai latte in the other. When I moved to New Fairfield, Connecticut in 2007, not knowing a soul, a mutual friend told me, “You have to call my friend, the writer Sophfronia Scott.” That suggestion led to an early morning meet-up at a Starbucks just off the highway near her home. But for me, Sophfronia has another identity altogether. In time, the Sandy Hook shooting would come to stamp a certain part of central Connecticut with the broadest imaginable girth of tragedy, and most certainly those families most affected by that day, with a sort of scarlet letter L, for insurmountable loss. Her two books, one written as a co-author with Tain, now 13, parse the enormity of that loss, along with the largest subjects of them all: faith, origins, life’s fragility, and motherhood with a capital M. Not so his dear friend Ben, and many others from their community. Her son Tain attended the school and he survived that day. The writer Sophfronia Scott, in her two new creative nonfiction books, This Child of Faith and Love’s Long Line, explores various facets of the tragedy and other topics with the vise of witness and her writer’s deep and empathic eye.

In the amphitheater of American horror stories, the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting of 20 school children and six adult staffers may be the saddest of all. Introduction and interview by Elizabeth Cohen Sophfronia teaches at Regis University’s Mile High MFA and Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her latest novel is Unforgivable Love (William Morrow). She was a writer and editor at Time and People before publishing her first novel, All I Need to Get By (St. Sophfronia Scott is author of the essay collection, Love’s Long Line, from Ohio State University Press’s Mad Creek Books and a memoir, This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World, from Paraclete Press.

This Child of Faith by Sophfronia Scott