The Judas Field Quotes

“In spite of all he had seen, Cass still believed in the fundamental decency of cats and men. He knew that God believed in it, too, in spite of all He’d seen – iin spite of all His grieving and all the lies told about Him down the bloody ages. He was God after all, and had made all creatures, and He had taken the noble chance of granting to one of them a will of its own, and in the end, the gift had been worth all the trouble. Maybe the right to choose was the best gift of all and the best proof of love. It was more precious even than life itself, for without the possibility of defeat, the victories would have no meaning.”
― Howard Bahr, The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War

“He was already tired of the rain. He never took long to grow weary of it in winter, though he liked it in the summertime when it fell hard, silver and green, and afterward steamed from the backs of horses, steamed up from the railroad ties and lay in a mist along Town Creek. In summer, the birds sang after a rain, but no such music rose from the cold drizzle of the dead time. Only silence, and only the dark.”
― Howard Bahr, The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War

“The fog was made more beautiful by its passing, like flags in the spring; like the last drone of cicadas in a dying summer; like the brief yellow of hickories, the purple of sweetgums, in the fall. You loved most the things that passed away, that you couldn't hold on to, no matter how much you loved them.”
― Howard Bahr, The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War

“There was nothing frail about her voice, however, or the way she paced before the mantel as she offered her plan in the same words she had used in the note, without enlargement. It was simple enough: she wanted him to go with her to Franklin and find her long-dead kinfolk and bring them home. She did not say why, after all this time, she had determined such a thing. Cass never asked, for he understood the quest as one of those that didn’t need to make sense except to the one making it. Moreover, he agreed to go, all his arguments and misgivings dying away as he watched Alison’s face.”
― Howard Bahr, The Judas Field: A Novel of the Civil War