I am only halfway through Michelle Bailat-Jones' beautiful Fog Island Mountains (Tantor Media, 2014), and truly there are too many lovely sentences to choose just one. I am beguiled by the author's delicate depiction of the emotional rift between a husband diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and his distraught wife, the tense, turbulent backdrop of a brewing typhoon, and the perfectly observed details of life in Japan, which have transported me instantly to a favorite former place in my own life. I am especially enchanted by our narrator, an elderly Japanese woman in the tiny mountain village of Komachi, who rescues and rehabilitates injured wild animals, and in particular, one special kitsune:
"She's been coming for as long as I can remember, this same fox, her auburn face now nearly white, and if I am calm enough, if I am quiet, she will let me come near her, and if you were to enter my garden at this hour, you might be surprised by the sight of an old woman with her hand settled carefully atop the head of a fox...
...she is the only one who accepted my healing, and she visits from time to time, the only way she can repay her debt, because everyone knows that foxes are very serious about gratitude."Sunday Sentence is a weekly meme hosted by David Abrams over at The Quivering Pen.
I received my copy of Fog Island Mountains as a Christmas gift from my family.
Happy reading!
Fog Island Mountains sounds like a beautiful book. Happy New Year!
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