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Description edit
A heart-rending story of the lives of a few inhabitants of a small American town and the massive effect of one very violent death Langston Braverman has just walked out on her PhD oral exams and returned home to Haddington, Indiana in a fragile emotional state. She retreats to her parents'... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Langston: Add a description of this character.
- Amos Townsend
- Alice Baker-maloney
- Jack
- Anna Lee
- Immaculata
- Beulah
- Grandma Wilkey
- Mary
- Mama
- Madeline
- Sarah
- Hopwood
- Gail
- Steve
- Jim
- Eloise
- Whitehead
- Lydia
- James
- Nan Braverman
- Mr. Burton
- Jolene
- Jacques Perrin
- Donne
- Tillich
- Lillian Poe
- Debbie
- Lucy
- Walt
- Robbie
- Miss Grogan
- Jonah
- Karen
- Mike
- Kierkegaard
- Gabriel
Quotes edit
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“It is the nature of the world that we miss the moment our fate changes, but can recall it later with perfect clarity.”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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One is either perfectly present and entirely innocent of one’s own contentment (which is remarkably like not being content) or one is aware, and thus distanced, and no longer at home or happy.
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God comes to us from the future, and has only one godlike gift: the lure. We are lured toward truth, beauty, and goodness . . . the lure is pulling at our hearts like some lucid joy inside every actual occasion and all we have to do is . . . Say yes.
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But there is really only one ultimate, unconditional concern, and that is for the Unconditional itself, what Tillich called our “passion for the infinite.” We grasp the notion of the infinite immediately and personally, and yet it is seldom the object to which we dedicate our lives, and this is where Amos began to feel nervous. We elevate the finite, which has as its only power that of flux and decay, and when our ultimate concern fails to achieve ultimacy, we live lives that are hopelessly broken, and we know it.
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It is the nature of the world that we miss the moment our fate changes, but can recall it later with perfect clarity.
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“‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Don’t you understand? Faustus was eternally damned because he was a bad reader.”
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Love, Amos thought, didn’t always harvest the world’s riches. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes two people woke up, and they were home. And sometimes they just walked away free.
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He was handing her the sweetest possibility this life offers: to leave in the middle, while everyone else stays behind and waits for the heroine to die in the cold.
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each other, that everything is impossible and time is too short.”
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We have, none of us, lived our lives as we ought to have, and maybe that’s a good, working definition of sin. God doesn’t care, the angels don’t care, no one is mad at us for our failures. But what agony, to know our better selves, the life we might have lived is there, just out of reach!”
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A life within limits, that’s what his father had taught him to live.
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Setting & Locations edit
First Sentence edit
It wasn't given to Langston Braverman to know the moment she became a different person; she only knew later, looking back on the afternoon a simple storm arrived and stayed for days, the afternoon she first saw the children.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Haven Kimmel (Author)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813
Subjects edit
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