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464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
He knelt and loaded his arm with wood - good, sharp, biting edges that creased his skin where his sleeve was rolled back; grainy flat pieces that clacked together and echoed across the clearing.Much of the book is written like this, drawing a full picture that's a feast for the senses. When I can hear each bootstep and see the motes dancing in the sunbeams, it heightens my sense of immersion and turns the volume up on the emotions.
ELLY
In town, they called her "Crazy Widow Dinsmore." But Elly was no stranger to their ridicule--she had been an outsider all her life, growing up in a boarded-up old house under the strict eye of her eccentric grandparents. Now she was all alone, with two little boys to raise, and a third child on the way.
WILL
He drifted into Whitney, Georgia, one lazy afternoon in the summer of 1941, hoping to put his lonely past behind him. He yearned for the tenderness he had never known, the home he'd never had. All he needed was for someone to give him a chance.
Then he saw her classified ad: WANTED--A husband. When he stepped across Elly Dinsmore's cluttered yard, Will Parker knew he had come home at last ...
“Could you say it once," he entreated, "like they say people do?"
Her heart beat like the wings of an eagle, taking her soaring as she spoke the words. "I love you, Will Parker."
The sting hit his eyelids and he hung his head because nobody had prepared him for this, nobody had said, When it happens you'll be resurrected. All that you were you will not be. All that you weren't, you are. He lunged against her, burying his face above her breasts, holding fast. "Oh, God..." he groaned. "Oh, God.”
“Touch me, he thought, my arm, my hand, a finger. Let me know it's all right for me to have these feelings for you.”
“Lizzy, Will thought. Lizzy P. 'You n me gonna be buddies, darlin'. He stretched one hand to Elly's hair, and circled Donald Wade's rump with his free arm and touched Thomas's leg, on the far side of Elly. And he smiled at Lizzy P. and thought, Heaven's got nothin' on being the husband of Eleanor Dinsmore.”