Fourth of July Creek: A Novel

That you were ashamed of these feelings did not drive them away.

The mother collected unemployment but her full-time occupation was self-pity.

thumbing the thin pages for answers to the little questions as if following the better part of God’s law was achieved by divining from Leviticus what to have for supper or what color socks to wear.

howled out griefs that had come on as sudden and frightening as earthquakes, and even after they emptied out, left him in fear of aftershocks, of unseen cracks in the load-bearing trestles of his mind.

She is proof that there is nothing that cannot happen to someone. That the world doesn’t need permission, that there is no novel evil it won’t embrace.