Sometimes I think that if it were possible to tell a story often enough to make the hurt ease up, to make the words slide down my arms and away from me like water, I would tell that story a thousand times.

Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.

And so a person can never promise to love someone forever because you never know what might come up, what terrible thing the person you love might do.

Among other things, Kathryn knew, grief was physically exhausting.

THE HERETIC'S DAUGHTER is raw, honest and completely captivating. Kathleen Kent takes what would seem to be a familiar subject and gives it a fresh, new perspective-moving us through a wrenching gamut of emotions as she does so. A searing look at one of the worst periods in our history.

To leave, after all, was not the same as being left.

The weight of his losses finally too much to bear. But not before he has known the unforgiving light of the equator, a love that exists only in his imagination, and the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.