"I paused and studied the flecks of rust and paint, how they appeared against the fields and mountains beyond. Each piece told its own tale of discovery, of being lost and found in a time of hardship and fear. Finally together now, we were all being reborn." Prologue, p. 1

"... most of the time we had no money, so we spent our afternoons in hunger and dreams." Ibid, p. 20

"Being born Malawian automatically made you a farmer. I think it's written in the constitution somewhere, like a law passed down from Moses. If you didn't tend the soil, then you bought and sold in the market, and before my father gave himself to the fields, he led the crazy life of a traveling trader." Chapter 2, p. 24

"I became a terrible daydreamer, partly because as I got older, the folktales of my childhood began to pale in comparison to the...