Human Traces

Chapter One

I

An evening mist, salted by the western sea, was gathering on the low hills — reed-spattered rises running up from the rocks then back into the gorse- and bracken-covered country — and on to the roads that joined the villages, where lamps and candles flickered behind the shutters of the grey stone houses. It was poor country — so poor, remarked the Curé, who had recently arrived from Angers, that the stones of the shore called out for God's mercy. With the mist came sputtering rain, made invisible by the extinguished light, as it exploded like flung gravel at the windows, while stronger gusts made the shivering pine trees shed their needles on the dark, sanded earth.

Jacques Rebière listened to the sounds from outside as he looked through the window of his bedroom; for a moment, a dim moo ... read full excerpt from Human Traces ebook