7.5.21 “It had gotten colder overnight, and the gravediggers had had to use a pneumatic drill.”

7.13.21 “That night, when Mrs. Chamberlain called, Emira could only piece together the words ‘take Briar somewhere…‘ and ‘…pay you double.‘”

7.12.21 “Simon the Fiddler had managed to evade the Confederate conscription men because he looked much younger than he was and he did everything he could to further that impression.”

7.10.21 “Oona stopped trusting the mirror years ago.”

7.8.21 “Once we lived in a summer country.”

7.6.21 “Jacob Finch Bonner, the once promising author of the “New & Noteworthy” (The New York Times Book Review) novel The Invention of Wonder, let himself into the office he‘d been assigned on the second floor of Richard Peng Hall, set his beat-up leather satchel on the barren desk, and looked around in something akin to despair.”