--An American Plague by Jim Murphy
“No one noticed that the church bells were tolling more often than usual to announce one death, and then another. They rang for Dr. Hugh Hodge’s little daughter, for Peter Aston, for John Weyman, for Mary Shewell, and for a boy named McNair. No one knew that a killer was already moving through their streets with them, an invisible stalker that would go house to house until it had touched everyone, rich or poor, in some terrible way.”
--An American Plague by Jim Murphy
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“Eight deaths in the space of a week in two houses on the same street…but the city did not take notice. Summer fevers were common visitors to all American cities in the eighteenth century, and therefore not headline news.”
--An American Plague by Jim Murphy “No earthly force could make her hair grow so long in two years, in twenty years, in a lifetime. Zel has suffered under an evil power. Konrad knows as well, he knows with more conviction than he’s ever known anything else in his life, that their love will restore her, their love will triumph over whatever wickedness the world holds.”
--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli “I had raised Zel wrong. I had raised a creative, curious child. I had let the child develop her own inclinations. I had clapped with pleasure at every new discovery, new talent. I had raised a child who could love easily and whom anyone could love back. Oh, what a terrible twist. I had raised a child in the best way I knew how, and it was that mistake that kept her from me now. I hold that child in a tower. The only one I love, the one I love more than life itself; for two years I have held that one in a stone room. And I live alone. I live the life I would have lived if I had never had Zel in the first place. Only it is far worse—for I know what I have lost.”
--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli “When I brought Zel to the tower that I had never heard of before but that my feet took me to all on their own, I did it to gain time. I needed to figure out how to lead Zel to the choice that would keep us together. I gave up salvation for all time---surely I deserved more than thirteen years in return.”
--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli “But knowing her full name doesn’t help any more than knowing her nickname. For no one Konrad asks knows any more about a Rapunzel than they know about a Zel.Rapunzel, Rapunzel, where have you gone?"
--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli “I know in an instant that this is the moment I have dreaded. I must talk to Zel of the most important decision she will make in her life. I must give Zel the choice between a life with me forever and the ordinary life of stupid people who know no better.”
--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli “I blanch. Zel will not be wed within the year. No. She must not leave me. This dress-to-be is perfect. Why has the cleark tainted my gift with her mundane talk of marriage? I am filled with elation at the thought of Zel’s beauty in this dress and dread at the thought that anyone other than me should appreciate that beauty. The contradictory emotions merge hatefully, indiscreetly, so that I cannot pick them apart.”
--Zel by Donna Jo Napoli “I imagine somewhere, in that sky, Halmoni is in heaven, bowing and greeting Harabugi and Jesus. There, her back will never be tired, and she’ll fly with the angels and not say once, Slow down. This was always her dream. To be up there. In heaven. I am still here, reaching.”
--A Step from Heaven by An Na “My dream of the cloud is not new. I have had variations of the same dream since we immigrated to America. Sometimes I fall from the tree. Sometimes I wake up before I have even finished climbing to the highest branch. Most times I am leaning out, reaching. But in every dream there are always the clouds just beyond my grasp. They float close above me in thick, solid folds of billowy white sheets. In my dream I have somehow figured out that to catch a cloud means I’ll fly to heaven. Fly to the place that I have never seen but only dreamed exists. Heaven, the place I was supposed to go, but instead I ended up here.”
--A Step from Heaven by An Na |