Here we go, I thought. 'Not my sort of place, Don.' I pictured the men who would be there, leaning up against the bar and talking in low voices, their eyes flicking up when a woman walked by. The same sort as the three who had showed up in the first week, whistling farmer-wants-a-wife. Don was different. I'd called on him with my first breech birth and he'd come with me, calmly sewed the prolapsed innards back into the ewe and saved her triplets, poured me a drink and said lightly, All gotta learn one way or the other.
-- Jake, Don (One)

Importance: This quote establishes early on Jake's wariness of strangers, and particularly of men. Don constantly encourages her to socialize so she doesn't have to be on her own on the farm, but Jake seems to like that solitariness, and to do everything she can to maintain it even when an...