“Take me, for example, Blue O’Malley. I had three mothers who were sisters.”

“He’d assumed it was a phase.”

“‘So, you’re in charge?’ asks Mr. Kolenda, the middle-aged owner of the small grocery store on Chicago’s West Side.”

“Ljubo sat in the witness box, manacled, his head hanging. Anna couldn’t tell if he was really on trial or only playing the part of someone on trial, like something from Brecht, but then he raised his bound hands with an anguished grunt and began chewing the meat of his own forearm.”

“At the very end of a rutted track that wound from the valley into the foothills lived a man named John Bunting.”