People had gone west leaving behind all sorts of trouble; what they found in California was the space and freedom to create new trouble.
My father was often impatient during March, waiting for winter to end, the cold to ease, the sun to reappear. March was an unpredictable month, when it was never clear what might happen. Warm days rai...
Lick your lips, Griet.I licked my lips.Leave your mouth open.I was so surprised by this request that my mouth remained open of its own will. I blinked back tears. Virtuous women did not open their mou...
If redwoods are the backbone of California, oaks are of England.
I heard voices outside our front door - a woman's, bright as polished brass, and a man's, low and dark like the wood of the table I was working on. They were the kind of voices we heard rarely in our...
I felt as if my parents had pushed me into the street, that a deal had been made and I was being passed into the hands of a man. At least he is a good man, I thought, even if his hands are not as clea...
He could not tell all of the California pines apart, the gray pine from the coulter, the bushop from the knobcone and the Monterey.
Funny, I didn't think much about apples fore we came to the Black Swamp. when I was growin up we had an orchard like everybody else but I didn't pay it no attention cept when the blossom was out in Ma...
You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.
There is no need to fear, he said, for you are here with me.
There is a difference between Catholic and Protestant attitudes to painting, he explained as he worked, but it is not necessarily as great as you may think. Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for...
Molly was up now, sitting in the kitchen nursing the babies and instructing Mrs. Bienenstock on how to make biscuits. Don’t pound the dough, Dody! Molly was crying with laughter. You want to end up cr...
Life was often simply the repetition of the same movements in a different order, depending on the day and the place.
I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen when I heard voices outside our front door – a woman’s, bright as polished brass, and a man’s, low and dark like the wood of the table I was working on. They w...
I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.
I never said I didn't want to marry. It just didn't happen-Iam not the sort of lady a man chooses to marry, for I am too plain and too serious. Now I am reconciled to being on my own.
I missed the currency of ideas. In London we had been part of a wide circle of solicitors’ families, and social occasions had been mentally stimulating as well as entertaining.
I knew that he would go out to the tavern, returning with eyes like glittering spoons.
I could not think of anything but his fingers on my neck, his thumb on my lips.
He had decided to trust me.