Two hundred and forty million years ago, waves left ripples in soft sands and silts. [S]ediments swept in and buried the ripples whole. They lay there under their blanket for hundreds of millions of years, as ages passed, an orogeny lifted the plateau, time turned ancient muds to rock, and erosion wore the blanket away. Now here we are, in the middle of a desert, looking at the echo of wetter days.

Our reluctant heroine, Essun, is still on the search for her missing daughter in the Stillness but feels responsible for the community that she saved—yet partially destroyed—with her orogeny, the ability to harness the energy of the Earth.

[T]he tiny town of … Marfa was also the perfect canvas for artist Donald Judd’s ambitious dream to create a Xanadu of contemporary art—an indoor-outdoor museum where artworks come alive beneath the wide blue skies and sharp Texas light.

To most people, Britain is a mythological realm on par with Atlantis or Shangri-La or El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold. Does it even exist? … And much like any other fabled empire, this real-life Xanadu boasts its own elite class of pleasure dome-dwelling artists!

It’s only natural that they want to meet … their children are going to get married. They are going to be mishpocha for the rest of their lives, so they’re a touch curious about each other.

I’d done the Zoom dating, the bread baking, … and all the other socially acceptable coping mechanisms, but Rosh Hashanah was the first holiday I observed that I’d had to spend without the familiar mishpocha of friends and family all around me, yelling, telling jokes, squinting critically at my bangs, and generally filling the room with light.