In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

by Bobi Conn

But there is no faking that kind of humility. You can’t pretend to love and give and forgive like my granny did. She didn’t go around telling people how much faith she had, or how good God was to her. I heard it in her quiet prayers. I tasted it in the food she grew, canned, killed, and cooked. I felt it in the softness of her skin, which grew loose and spotted with age, unprotected and unadorned. It filled her house and spilled into the creeks and waiting hillsides, it wrapped itself around me, and I held on to that when there was nothing else. CHAPTER 25 The Canary in the Coal Mine I’ve worried a lot about my father and how he became so cruel, so indifferent to those of us who loved him and looked for his love.