Then he turned and went back to Walter. He stood for a moment, and sat down. From here, he could see the last thing his father had looked at – the long stretch of plowed land to the east, the gently curving, flat horizon, and just the tops of the Grahams’ old windbreak – they had planted blue spruces, but only a few survived. He had seen birds, Joe

That night, she sat up by her old window after putting Rosa to bed. The western horizon was flat, flat, flat, and the merest pale string of light shone above it, like a steel rim. Above that, the gallery of stars was beginning to shape itself, deep and broad and sharp in a way that you never saw in Chicago, even out in the middle of the lake.

It’s not just Frankie going to school for himself. He’s going for all of us. The world is changing, and someone has to go out into it and be prepared for it.’ Joe snorted. ‘Son, you know that that someone is him and not you. You love the world you live in, and that’s good. He loves the world we don’t know much about, and that’s good, too. I

Only Mama, with her chickens and cream, and Frank, with his fox pelts, were actually bringing in cash, and all of that was going for three things, shoes, coal, and mortgage. With luck, Papa said, there would be an early spring and the coal would hold out.

What you did when you wanted to get away with something was not to plan, but to look for an opportunity. Frank didn’t think that bicycle was going anywhere – fifteen dollars was a lot of money with everyone out of work and half the shops in Denby and Usherton boarded over – so he waited.

Lois was a puzzle that was to some extent solved by Henry, because Henry was so wonderful and delightful a child that clearly it was the case that some were better than others, and you were fortunate to get a good one. Even though Mama was sad a lot of the time now, which seemed to be the way you got once you’d had a baby, she never looked at Henry

Everybody, including Frank, was well aware that he couldn’t sit still no matter how many times he was told to settle down, so being given stuff to fiddle with was better than looking for trouble on his own. You want to get into the hayloft – well, get up there twice a day, or more, and throw down the hay. You want to mess with the horses? Well,

After a month or two, she had garnered massive praise for not succumbing to her grief, but how could you do that on a farm? Never could you say to the corn, you must wait to be harvested; never could you say to the cows, you must put off being milked; never could you say to the boys, don’t get up today; never could you say to the winter weather, I

When you first walked onto your place, you were so glad to have it that everything looked good. Or perfect. Then, year by year – it had been six years now, six springs, summers, falls, and winters (mud, heat, harvest exhaustion, snow) – all the extra steps began to tell on your affections. And every wrong thing about a farm involved extra steps: