I am still behind on the memes I’ve been tagged for, but this one was easy, ie, requiring little of me in terms of reflection or writing ability. (My apologies, but if you’d seen my email inbox this weekend, you’d understand. Elrena, who tagged me for this one, certainly understands, as she sent me half that email as we were copyediting our book!) Anyway, all that work’s starting to ease up, my brain is starting to re-engage, and I’m reading the most fabulous book. I don’t think I’ll be able to part with it anytime soon, so don’t hold your breath that it’ll turn up in a Pay It Forward Book Exchange; I’m only half-way through, and I know this is one I’m going to start re-reading as soon as I finish.

Here are the rules:
“Open the book you’re currently reading to page 161, and post the fifth sentence on the page, then think of 5 bloggers to tag.”

And here is the sentence, a bit of dialogue between two of the novel’s main characters, Prue Winship, a gin distiller, and her younger sister, Tem; the setting is Brooklyn, late 18th century, just after their father’s death:

“The fires have been cold almost three weeks,” she told Tem, before her sister went off for her evening’s drinking, “Will you help?”

But that’s not the kind of sentence, fine as it is, that makes you run off and buy a book, so here’s another. It would probably be useful to know that Prue Winship, gin distiller, is hoping to build a bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan:

“Prue thought if she could bridge the distance between here and the Other Side; if she could build a monument to expiate her sin and her folly, and to embody the love she had borne her parents, who’d crossed over too soon, before she was ripe to understand them; if she might take this wealth of money and skill her father had bequeathed her, and do something with it, for the public good and perhaps to the general wonderment–if all, if any, of these circumstances might come to pass, Will Severn could keep to himself, and Ben could remain in the wilderness, and she could never move a hair’s breadth closer to knowing where the dead resided, yet she would be happy the rest of her days.”

That’s a good sentence.

And now I tag Feed Your Loves, Midlife Mama, Marmee’s Musings, Fertile Ground, and LoveBug and RolleyPolley.