Ashes To Dust

Начало книги

I wish to thank all the residents of the Westmann Islands, who assisted me as I wrote this book. Foremost among them is Kristin Johannsdottir, who could not have been more helpful. Sigmundur Gisli Einarsson, Olafur M. Kristinsson and Arni Johnsen also receive thanks for their helpfulness, as well as the expatriate Westmann Islander Gisli Baldvinsson. None of these individuals is a model for any character in the book.

She had often considered death to be a desirable option. Today, however, she hadn’t been feeling that way, which was rather unfortunate in light of the circumstances. When her father had died after a difficult struggle with cancer, she’d wondered what the point of everything was. How short and insignificant a life is when all is said and done, she had thought. Her father had been the lynchpin of their little family, but months later she had trouble recalling how he looked without the aid of a photograph. And she had supposedly been one of the closest to him – how quickly were others forgetting him? Once her mother had passed away, as well as herself and her sister, no one would remember him, and it would be as if he had never set foot on this earth. The thought filled her with despair. Now, as she stared her own fate in the face, she realized that her story would never be told. She would never be able to make a clean breast of it as she had intended. No one else could make sense of all this, much less explain the events that had recently overtaken her. Everything was going black, but she managed to snap herself out of it. She knew that when it happened next she might not be able to resist.

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