Dear John Steinbeck...

You were a brilliant, brilliant man. I love you.
Carly

Here are some favorites from To A God Unknown (so far)...

On top of the ridge stood a clump of giant madrone trees, and Joseph saw with wonder how nearly they resembled meat and muscles. They thrust up the muscular limbs as red as flayed flesh and twisted like bodies on the rack. Joseph laid his hand on one of the branches as he rode by, and it was cold and sleek and hard. But the leaves at the ends of the horrible limbs were bright green and shiny. Pitiless and terrible trees, the madrones. They cried with pain when they burned.

The frame of the house was standing, waiting for its skin...

...the whole cup of the sky, the land, eddied with black trees, and the crested waves that were the mountains, and earth storm, frozen in the peaks of its rushing, or stone breakers moving eastward with infinite slowness. Joseph wondered if there were any words to say these things. He said, "I like the night. It's more strong than the day."

He cried in his mind, "Can you hear me? I am cold with a thing to say, and prayerful for a way to say it." His eyes widened and he was entranced. "I have thought without words."

She said silently, "I must pray a little. Lord Jesus, make things easy for me because I am afraid. In all the time I've had to learn about myself, I have learned nothing. Be kind to me, Lord Jesus, at least until I learn what kind of thing I am."

Joseph nearly forgot his mission, for hte hills reached out tender arms to him and the mountains were as gentle and insistent as a loving woman who is half asleep.