She parted her lips as though she were going to scold him, but, after a moment of sitting with her mouth agape like a fish, thought the better of it.

The war dragged on, as wars tend to do.

Pick a side? You done picked the wrong side.

He was an indecent man, I told myself - prayerfully - and then I prayed for him to become decent.

There was no justice in rebellion. This Javert had come to believe after seeing Marseille fall headfirst into the abyss of the revolution.

Praying to the Almighty, Javert?” called a voice, and Javert opened his eyes to see Rousseau and Leclerc smirking at him. Javert tipped his head and said to the others,"If I was, it would be awfully rude to interrupt my prayer, don’t you think? But, no, Leclerc. I find no solace in speaking with an imaginary puppeteer.”Rousseau, who was twenty-five and utterly dim of mind, frowned at Javert’s words. Javert rolled his eyes and sighed,"I don’t pray.

In August, an inescapable blanket of heat settled over Paducah, the last gasping breath of summer roaring its weight out over the populace.

Thus, in the boy’s mind, drink and destruction braided together. Intoxication, he concluded, was a swift and effective catalyst for havoc.

Sometimes the smoke from the factories and riverboats and trains would obscure the night sky entirely. But the town's industrial breath was blowing somewhere else tonight, and so the Armstrong house was bathed in starlight. Nell studied the little white specks, like glittering dust on black velvet, and she asked,"You boys ever wonder what it'd be like to be somewhere else?

She was an afterthought, little Martha. She was treated the way many families treated pet dogs - she had to be fed and cleaned every now and then, but she was left to her own devices for the most part.