Let the water cover the whole damn place.
-- Miriam Miller (Prologue)

Importance: In the prologue to the novel, Mimi sets the scene: Miller’s Valley is to be flooded with the living resettled elsewhere so that the valley can become a reservoir. Mimi is enraged with this turn of events, but even angrier with her mother when her mother refuses to fight with the statement that the water can cover the whole place. Mimi feels that, as not only residents of Miller’s Valley but as Millers themselves, they should be fighting. Mimi’s anger at her mother is understandable, but Mimi later learns is wrong.

Ten, twenty years, this whole place will be different than it is now. It’s like, how come we’re so stupid, to think that things are going to stay the way they are forever? We should know better, right?
-- Tommy (untitled chapter)

Importance: When Tommy comes home for a visit from...