Author: Elizabeth Strout
Quotes of Author: Elizabeth Strout
The Johnson boy came to Tommy's mind, how he couldn't get off drugs, and then Tommy thought of Marilyn Macauley and her husband, Charlie, and then his mind went to his older brother, who had died a few years back, and he thought how his brother-who had been in World War II, who had been at the camps when they were being emptied-he thought how his brother had returned from the war a different man; his marriage ended, his children disliked him. Not long before his brother died, he told Tommy about what he had seen in the camps, and how he and the others had the job of taking the townspeople through them. They had somehow taken a group of women from the town through the camps to show them what had been right there, and Tommy's brother said that although some of the women wept, some of them put their chins up, and looked angry, as if they refused to be made to feel bad. This image had always stayed with Tommy, and he wondered why it came to him now. He unrolled the window all the way down. It seemed the older he grew-and he had grown old-the more he understood that he could not understand this confusing contest between good and evil, and that maybe people were not meant to understand things here on earth. But book-quote
