Thanks to all for the suggestetions and advice. When I first saw those words, the sentence seemed oddly jarring and it took me a few readings to realize that the "was" truly bothered me. Since the rest of the book is so well-constructed, I thought perhaps this might be a rule exception I'd missed in The Chicago Manual of Style.
The sentence comes from one of the most beautiful and evocative novels I've read in a very long time, Mary Dowing Hahn's The Old Willis Place: A Ghost Story, page 17. (Yes, to cheer myself up after reading about the Clinton years, I read a book about ghosts.)
The writing is not going well and I'm not sleeping well; the two are probably connected. It's been a long time since I had any chocolate, so perhaps a quick supply run would be beneficial.
I'm also worried about the latest storm - and how much gas the folks who left Houston used to fuel their SUVs and Hummers - but no amount of chocolate can fix that.
1 comment:
Not only all those big vehicles, but there were also reports of multi-car families rushing out, getting in line, filling up and then going home. Not Dallas, not San Antonio, home.
Yes, they will need gas after the storm, but did they need to fill all three or four cars. These were families where mom, dad and multi-teenager families each had a car. Many probably SUVs too!
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