“Oh, that river of wishes, the slippery crocodile dream of it, how it might have carried my body down through all the glittering sand bars to the sea.”

“The sun beats down, and I feel my shoulders burning. I could stay in this boat all day. Time is suspended in a boat. I take a deep breathand try to remember this moment, the heat on my face, the grit under my feet, the strength of the waves. I run my hands through the pebblesand sand, searching for sea glass. One thing leads to another. There are tide pools between the larger rocks, tiny rivers connecting themto the sea”

“This case was too full of skewed, slippery parallels, and I couldn't shake the uneasy sense that they were somehow deliberate. Every coincidence felt like a sea-worn bottle slammed down on the sand at my feet, with my name engraved neatly on the glass and inside a message in some mockingly indecipherable code.”

“Rivers course through my dreams, rivers cold and fast, rivers well-known and rivers nameless, rivers that seem like ribbons of blue water twisting through wide valleys, narrow rivers folded in layers of darkening shadow, rivers that have eroded down deep in a mountain's belly, sculpted the land, peeled back the planet's history exposing he texture of time itself.”

“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.”

“She told me that while my father’s body might be crushed under tons of black earth, the body is nothing but camouflage. She whispered that every soul is a river trying to find its way back to the sea.”