"In the years that I had spent looking for lost husbands, wives, and children, I had learned not to think that I could stare into a one-dimensional face and see the person behind the photograph ..." p. 5

"This could just as easily have been my place, a home where a man could drink in boredom and repent in violence and be forgiven for the price of a beer." p. 9

"Even little displaced Okie girls grow up longing to be gone with some far better wind than that hot, cutting, dusty bite that's blowing their daddy's crops to hell and gone." p. 25

"I checked Gleeson's glass. Cranberry juice and a ton of vodka. He was either a secret tippler, a pathological liar, or more nervous about my visit than he cared for me to know." p. 43

"Youth endures all things, kings and poetry and love. Everything but time." p. 51

"I...