And throughout, a growing character sketch of that whale that matters.

Some wear wigs, others feign a thuggish or rescuing look.

Where do we stumble, how do seas begin and end, what does prayer do.

We finish the novel shaken, wondering why we did not choose an earlier escape.

We cross our fingers for Bertie.

…the intellectual and social ambitions of women who defy the conformist sensibility of a pre-railroad provincial town.

…Terry Tempest Williams links flight to heaven, and both to her abiding faith.

Of his strict teachings, what did his followers actually accept?  

Inspector Bucket’s lightness and calm and haste we cannot forget.

...did not mistake cultural influence for economic and political heft.

...if inner piety followed ceremonial magic and fetishism.

Joseph Smith set himself apart.

“Out of love, you can write with straight fury.”

…we hear expressed the desire for gentility, annuities, attachment, matrimony.

Stopping a story is as hard as saying good night.

…there is heady intimacy, characteristic wryness – and Dresden.

Saints: people who behave decently in a strikingly indecent society.

…decisions matter and we are pulled into the fraught consequences of choices avoided.

…begins with bad luck (chances for worse) and leaves with good (towards significance).

…The crowds upon the pavement / Were fields of golden wheat