“...as vivid and fabulous as a unicorn...”

“Yancey crawled from her tangled bed one morning and assembled her long limbs and sharp bones into something as exotic and seductive to the eye as a peacock or a griffin or a unicorn.”

“Her light brown eyes were the color of sherry, fringed with long, thick, gold-tipped lashes.”

“The air was cool and fresh and smelled of the kelp and salt that streamed in off the bay at the full of the tide. The sun was high in the tender vault of the sky, and the thunderheads that would sweep in late in the day were still only white marble puffs at the margins of the sky, solid and silver-lined. There was a blue clarity about the horizon and the distant hills that spoke of a weather change but not for another day or two. Along the meadows' edges, as we drove past, I saw pink clover and purple lupine, hawkweed and wild daylilies. Brilliant pink wild azaleas, called lambkill here, flickered like wildfire in the birch groves. Daisies, buttercups, wild columbine, and the purple flags of wild iris starred the roadside. Behind them all was the eternal dark of the pines and firs and spruce thickets and, between those, the glittering indigo of the bay.”

“On a night of icy silver radiance, when the very sea and stars seemed on fire with light.”

“...bathed in the thick honey gold of the sun through encircling trees only just beginning to turn the muted metal colors of fall.”

“The sunset over the bay that evening was a conflagration of blood-red and orange and deep, gold-edged purple. I remember: unforgettable.”