A month or so ago, I gave a British friend a copy of my novel Back to Lazarus. The next day, having read a couple of chapters, he remarked that there were expressions he was unfamiliar with. I wondered if they were Americanisms or Southernisms, but he couldn’t recall any examples. When I recently received a very sweet email from my West Virginia hometown that began, “God bless your heart,” it reminded me of my British friend, and also of another cross-cultural conversation several years ago. I was on a month-long summer research cruise in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands at Read more…