a local preacher, Bell Johnson, a single man who is attracted to her and who represents a different way of life. Within this simple framework, Morgan explores universal themes: one's dreams for the future vs. the brutal realities of the present, new life and the hopes it represents vs. death of loved ones, the feeling that God watches over all vs. the sense that God is more interested in the land than in individuals, and the belief that self-knowledge comes from one's relationships with the outside world vs. the understanding that self-knowledge grows from within. Morgan writes with the deeply religious sense that all life is somehow connected, and that God is part of a continuum that begins with the land, the place where life begins. The three main characters here--Aloma, Orren, and Bell Johnson--are fully developed, and Morgan does not need to tell us how they feel: their reactions to what is happening to them are so fully realized that the reader knows how they feel. She excels at recreating a person's inner feelings with exactness, and her description of nature, while sometimes gorgeous, is always balanced shortly afterward with realistic images of its fragility. Frequently using nouns as verbs, she compresses images, talking about Aloma "basketing the eggs," about Bell's father agreeing " to reverend the church," and the farm's rooster "tightroping the empty crib." In the conclusion, Morgan reconciles the conflicts as well as Aloma and Orren might be expected to reconcile them, given their youth, but