The Conviction of Lucinda Williams

I think Lucinda Williams came into my life through an act of fate: My dad had picked up a CD of her 2003 album, World Without Tears, at a garage sale, and it soon became one of the few that lived in the glove compartment of the family minivan. For years, that CD played on repeat, and Williams’s doleful, sultry wail would carry us through high mountains and low deserts, through tired silences and back-seat brawls.