Higher Skies

He came toward me in some of the same ways that I saw men like him approach the trees. He leaned into my neck just that way, confident, reassuring. He put his hand on my trunk, in the space just above my hips. It didn't seem so awful then-not with the care he put into his work, into me; not for the way he went about things Some crimes are both insidious and silent. The way cancer can live and move about the body without making itself known. Claire has lived beneath Jasper skies her whole life, surrounded by the Pineywoods, in a town known for its unchanging ways. It's a life she both loves and the abuse, the anchoring, the predictability. Like prejudice, she learns that the past can neither end or be forgotten completely; it can merely conclude the way human crimes do. Higher Skies is the story of one woman's journey to the truth, to surrender, to love.