Imagery:
"On the surface Burgdorf was a town of great virtues while underneath all kinds of transgressions were hushed up."
"Some of the people in town thought the brief time without light last summer had drained him of his strength, but the old women suspected that his violets had ranked him inferior and—in a bizarre reversal of his own ritual—had let him shrivel to death."
Floating in My Mother's Palm: A Novel