“Those were the clear mornings. But there have also been the storms, Goretti and Nils, the relentless lashings of high winds that cause the roof timbers to creak like a ship on stormy seas and elicit haunting moans and whines from the branches outside. The ribbons of rain that glaze the saturated hilltops, slithering down any low spot in the fields, form wide swathes of mirror-silver pools reflecting the dove gray sky from the valley bottom. The ghostly light reflected off what should be dark earth or emergent crop, instead a quicksilver glow tapering up into orderly furrows cut by the plow.”

I love Francesca's writing.