This year photographer Erika Larsen published two stories with us “There’s No Place Like Home,” about Garrison Keillor’s hometown region of St. Paul, Minnesota and the “People of the Horse” about Native Americans and their relationship to horses.

In each story there was a particular image that struck me as especially beautiful and powerful. Both are of young girls with their animals. Both capture a moment of innocence on the cusp of adolescence. Olivia Rowe, 9, from Anoka, Minnesota holds a fancy white pigeon with its wings splayed out. Olivia is a relative of Keillor’s and also a member of a religious community called the Plymouth Brethren. How perfect that she should be holding a symbol