The challenges in this place are real and sometimes very difficult, but I've learned to slow down and look for beauty in my days, for the mysteries and blessings woven into everything, into the very words we speak.

Writing is always a process of discovery—I never know the end, or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There’s a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.

All that sunny afternoon, traveling north and east, Caroline believed absolutely in the future. And why not? For if the worst had already happened to them in the eyes of the world, then surely, surely, it was the worst that they left behind them now.

It seemed there was no end at all to the lies a person could tell, once she got started.

He could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He'd come to think of it as a kind of penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped out of airplanes, they drank too much and got into their cars and drove without seat belts.

No one could suspect the intricate mysteries of her heart.

A fear Paul had transformed all these years, like a gifted alchemist, into anger and rebellion.