1 pretty fair

the tale begins with "the night that would change everything," an event that triggers the 40-year epic to come. For just a few moments, during a raging storm, four people cross paths, the strands of their lives twisting into a mysterious knot, bound by a promise. Lynnie, a mentally disabled woman who does not speak, is caught and taken back to the state institution from which she escaped. Homan, a deaf African American man, continues running, plunging through the woods, desperate to elude capture. And meanwhile, a newborn baby sleeps in the attic of a widow who wonders how she will keep this infant safe.

From here, the plot unfolds across the decades, covering so much ground that readers may wonder at the improbable twists of fate that befall these characters. Heart-wrenching moments abound, sometimes weighted with overly earnest insights. But there's an alluring mystery to solve and impossible odds to overcome, which propel the story forward.

As Homan wonders whether he will ever again see Lynnie, whom he calls Pretty Butterfly, he tries to make sense of the sad and confusing events they have endured: "Maybe when you're making your way forward into your life, it just looks higgledy-piggledy, the way, if you were a fly walking across one of Beautiful Girl's drawings, all you'd be able to see was green, then blue, then yellow. Only if you got in the air . . . would you see the colors belonged to a big drawing, with the green for this part of the picture, the blue and yellow for others, every color being just where it was meant to be. Could that be what life was?"