For years, every time I saw the byline Natalie Pompilio in the Philadelphia Inquirer, I would make it a point to read the story. I knew it was bound to be a compelling human-interest story. As Ezra Pound once wrote about Ernest Hemingway, her writing reflects “that innate and genial honesty that is the very soul of great writing.” She has sharpened the English language into a precision instrument that cuts through irrelevancy and into the soul of the subject.