Rarely have I found myself so moved by a literary character. Edie, our absorbing and magnificently tragic narrator, is nothing short of beautiful in thought and action alike. The way she moved through her world--an England rolling through another era's autumn, where the flaws of folk lay themselves bare as a shorn field--was at once removed from it, and yet deeply, inseparably within its very core. Through her we saw the tense color change of the imminent harvest, smelled the dew layered crisp of a morning, and felt the whole of creation spin about her grief and anger and great love. There was not a single moment that I felt she was anything less than alive, and vibrant, and yearning for understanding from anyone at all; and there wasn't a page gone by where I didn't wish to be in the story myself and tell her it, and she, would be all right.

To me, that's the mark of a damn good story. One that will stay in my mind for a long time yet, and will doubtless resurface when I sit by a river and listen to the reeds in a summer air.