Those who Save Us [antikvár]

PROLOGUE Trudy and Anna, The funeral is well attended, the New Heidel-burg Lutheran Church packed to capacity with farmers and their families who have come to bid farewell to one of their own. Since every seat is full, they also line the walls and crowd the vestibule. The men are comically unfamiliar in dark suits; they don't get this dressed up for regular services. The women, however, wear what they do every Sunday no matter what the weather, skirt-and-sweater sets with hose and pumps. Their parkas, which are puffy and incongruous and signify the imminent return to life's practicaUties, are their sole concession to the cold. And it is cold. December in Minnesota is a bad time to have to bury a loved one, Trudy Swenson thinks. In fact, it is quite impossible. The topsoil is frozen three feet down, and her father wiU have to be housed in a refrigeration unit in the county morgue until the earth thaws enough to receive him. Trudy tries to steer her mind away from how Jack wiU look after several months in storage. She makes an attempt to instead concentrate on the eulogy. But she must be suffering the disjointed cognition of the bereaved, for her thoughts have assumed a willful hfe of their own.