Nadine Doolittle

“From then on I was raised by a television set. It told me what to eat, how to dress, and when to go to bed. It cared very deeply about my education and chatted to me about world events. A thoroughly dependable parent.”

You only have to say who you are in the city and people believe you. Here, you have to be who you are.

Another so-called advance that's useless without power. I don't even own a watch anymore. Watches used to be set and wound each morning. Winding a watch is easy; going into town to find batteries for a dead one is not.

“Dad’s hanging himself in the basement!” (…) Sara, the rebel, the angry one (…) says, “Well, is he already hanging or just working on it?”

I only lose patience with this lot when they start badmouthing this country because it's got laws they got to abide with. Perry died on a stony beach for their freedom. What was the point of it? So's a bunch of dope heads can spit on the flag?

Coping with the fire, the frozen pipes and the vermin was almost a relief. It took the edge off her misery. Like those people who cut their skin or burn their arms to relieve—the pain was a distraction from what was really going wrong.

Madness was not so far-fetched. People unravel much more easily than she would have thought possible. Witness the evening news—it is unbelievably easy to lose one’s sanity. A chain of unlucky events disturbs an otherwise stable mind.

Owen Musgrave never hit a woman in the face. Owen had scruples. A swaggering, handsome braggart who couldn’t hold a job and broke Del’s mom arm twice was proud of the fact that he had never hit a woman in the face.

“(…) That young cop, what’s her name—Constable Fournier, she’s taking statements. She’s quite tiny, don’t you think? She wears that bullet proof vest and so forth, but she’s still too small to defend a person in my opinion. If I’m being attacked, I would prefer a male officer to come to my defense, not another woman, wouldn’t you?”



“I think the gun balances things out.”

Sara turned towards St. Jude, wondering if the pioneers realized they had named their village for the patron saint of lost causes.