“Nat was the first one out of the car. She stepped into the dirt parking lot, her low-heeled shoes printing chevrons into the reddish dust. Ahead of them the lake shimmered blue, dancing with sun. They were somewhere in northern Utah, one day out from their final destination in Idaho Falls, and not a moment too soon.”
“Explosions, shrapnel, indiscriminate bullets—so many expats had died over the years that I couldn’t help but picture my own end: in a restaurant garden one evening, after telling a near-death story, or in a bar, a guesthouse, any of the places foreigners sipped wine, whiskey, and cocktails, smoked pot or snorted methylphenidate—knockoff Ritalin shipped in from Iran or Pakistan, and sold without a prescription.\.”
“A thirteen-year-old girl stands in a landscape made almost entirely of garbage, screaming at a common domestic sow.”
“It having become apparent that I should write a novel, my next concern became which novel I should write.”
