“An hour passed and another and then, like a glass of water overfilled - the meniscus inverting, going convex, gravity pulling at the edges, the overflow finally giving way - he could not longer suffer his own cowardice. ”

“He was failing at everything important. A room away his daughter was sitting with her face in her hands and he could not go to her.”

“For Winkler each hour was another hour between Cleveland and Anchorage, between who they were becoming and who they had been.”

“Every thirty-one hundred years a volume of water equivalent to all the oceans passed through the atmosphere.”

“he could feel his hope wilting.”

“He could not look at his daughter without feeling his heart turn over.”

“Behind her leg a shy little girl - Grace - smiling up. "Dad?" It was a kind hope. But his dreams spoke to none of that: when he slept he dreamt of darkness, or of people he did not recognize, or of water closing slowly, almost gratefully, over his head.”