“Coyness wasn't the only thing Ardetta had been aggressive about and he'd had to summon up all his southern chivalry to turn her down gently. When he'd relented and obliged her with a kiss, she'd been on him like ugly on an ape. He'd narrowly escaped her clutches with his honor intact.”

“When she squeezed his arm and told him she had two pies in her buggy, he thought he'd died and gone to heaven.”

“He'd seen her pale skin, glowing like a ripe peach in the flickering light of the kerosene lamps, and the sight had left him with a bad case of the horn colic.”

“Poor Almafae hadn't been quite right since the time she'd stuck her head in a gnat ball at the age of two.”

“Just thinking about January being in that shack all alone made him swell up fit to bust his britches.”

“How could he convince her to join him and hitch her buggy to a star when she was bound and determined to hitch it to a sodbuster's plow?”

“...if loving Case meant going to hell, maybe heaven wasn't for her.”