Chapter 8
When they left Chicago for what they both knew to be the last time, Etan didn’t miss how Alex grew more quiet as the terrain changed. Farmland and orderly rows and divisions fell to wild, disorganized trees, rocks, and streams. The flat, uncurving highway they’d followed for hundreds of miles—along with ruler-straight roads jutting off at regular intervals—flowed into curving roads with the mountains of eastern Kentucky soaring high alongside.
After hours of Illinois and then Indiana, Etan had to admit not being able to see more than a few hundred yards ahead was shocking. The green even changed, from the pale cultivated version of hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans dotted with bright wind turbines to the wild hues of fir, oaks, maples, and more other trees and brush than h
