All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones

Aubrey's two older sisters married not long after the family returned to Virginia and moved with their husbands to other farms in Arlington County. They—Miles, the mother, Essie, and Aubrey—lived mostly from hand to mouth, but they did not go without. Aubrey's sisters and their husbands were generous, and the three of them, in their little house on their little piece of land with a garden and chickens and two cows, were surrounded by country people just as generous who had known the family when they had had a brighter sun.

The foregoing is excerpted from All Aunt Hagar's Children published by HarperCollins. Copyright ©2006 by Edward P. Jones. All rights reserved.