Anything Is Possible (Amgash #2)

by Elizabeth Strout

It seemed the older he grew—and he had grown old—the more he understood that he could not understand this confusing contest between good and evil, and that maybe people were not meant to understand things here on earth.

This was the skin that protected you from the world—this loving of another person you shared your life with.

Shelly Small as a woman who suffered only from the most common complaint of all: Life had simply not been what she thought it would be.

They had grown up on shame; it was the nutrient of their soil. Yet, oddly, it was her father she felt she understood the best. And for a moment Annie wondered at this, that her brother and sister, good, responsible, decent, fair-minded, had never known the passion that caused a person to risk everything they had, everything they held dear heedlessly put in danger—simply to be near the white dazzle of the sun that somehow for those moments seemed to leave the earth behind.