Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance: A Novel

by Richard Powers

When we don’t know what we are after, we risk passing it over in the dark. The Chinese played with fireworks for hundreds of years without inventing the gun.

The photo caption touched off a memory: Three farmers on their way to a dance, 1914. The date sufficed to show they were not going to their expected dance. I was not going to my expected dance. We would all be taken blindfolded into a field somewhere in this tortured century and made to dance until we’d had enough. Dance until we dropped.