Chapters (61)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Imagine a girl
- Prologue
- The Foreigner
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- The Skeptic
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- The Spectator
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- The Assassin
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- The Hunter
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Imagine a girl
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Ben McPherson
- About the Publisher
He studied me for a moment. “You’re father to a heroine. To two heroines, most likely. These things run in the family, you know.”
I laughed. “I’m not a hero, Bror.”
He laughed gently. “And yet you married the most exceptional woman. Let us take with us our coffee as we walk.”
We stood at the top of a rise that looked down over the outbuildings. A single vast shed, two stories high, painted red; and beside the shed a lower building, long and narrow and painted black, where the horses were stabled in winter and the dogs were housed all year around. In a field beyond the outbuildings three young women in shift dresses were crouched, turning the earth with trowels and hoes, each working her way along a neatly plowed row of potato plants. One paused for a moment, rubbed the dry earth off her hands. She glanced up the hill toward Bror, who nodded in her direction. The girl nodded back and picked up her trowel. How happy they looked in their work; how comfortable Bror seemed in his role of protector and guide.
“Okay,” I said. “Where do I sign?”
“I would welcome you as a member today.” He turned to me. His eyes searched mine. “If I thought for a moment you were sincere.”
“Almost makes me want to get down on my knees and pray.”
He laughed. “Then let us pray together.”
“I said almost.”
“I welcome the fallen. Bring them back to the fold.”
That strange charisma of his. Where was it from?
He seemed to catch the question in my gaze. “What?” he said.
“You’re unusually alpha for a priest.”
“Says the alpha-satirist.”
I looked at the girls in the field, at the gray of their shift dresses blending with the parched farmland.
“Were those girls fallen when they came to you?”
“No more than you are, Cal,” he said. He smiled a warm, enveloping smile.
“I don’t consider myself fallen.”
“What fallen man knows that he is?”
I pointed at myself. “Not fallen.”
His eyes were dancing now. “We are sparring a little. This is fun, no? The alpha-satirist and the alpha-priest. But in answer to your question, you would have to ask the girls themselves. We really are very nonjudgmental.”
“Okay,” I said, “I can see there’s something to what you do here.”