"The night is hot and breathless, the clouds painted like horsetails against the sky; a peal of thunder rumbles out on the Gulf like an apple rolling around in the bottom of a wood barrel, and the first raindrops ping against the window fan. She sleeps on her side, and the sheet molds her thigh, the curve of her hip, her breast. In the flicker of the heat lightning the sun freckles on her bare shoulder look like brown flaws in sculpted marble." Chapter 1, p. 1.

"The false dawn, with its illusions and mist-wrapped softness, can be as inadequate and fleeting as Morpheus' gifts." Chapter 1, p. 23.

"In my dreams is a watery place where my wife and some of my friends live. I think it's below the Mekong River or perhaps deep under the Gulf. The people who live there undulate in the tidal currents and are covered with...