Here's one example of Kingsolver's masterful touch (on page 283): "She thought of other times, other dire news. Pregnancies, wanted or not. It was never real at first. She recalled the day of her mother's diagnosis, holding her bone-thin arm, its yielding skin, walking her out of the doctor's office onto the crumbling, shaded parking lot. Little humps of moss that swelled along a scar in the asphalt like drops of green blood. All these vivid external details suggesting nothing had changed. They'd decided to go to the grocery with no more mention, that day, of the end of the world.
