Book Beginnings + Friday 56: Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading. Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice and asks you to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your ereader and share a non-spoilery sentence or two.

This week I'm featuring Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire. It's a collection of short stories that follows Rose Marshall - the 'Ghost of Sparrow Hill Road'.  I'm in the process of rereading it right now since the sequel just came out. I thought I probably needed to refresh my memory of the events that happened in this book before diving into The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. So far, it's just as good, possibly even better than I remember.

About the Book

Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross—a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea.

It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running.

They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her.

You can’t kill what’s already dead.

Book Beginning (From the first story, 1973: The Dead Girl in the Diner)

There's this vocabulary word - "linear." It means things that happen in a straight line, like highways and essays about what you did on your summer vacation. It means A comes before B, and B comes before C, all the way to the end of the alphabet, end of the road...end of the line. That's linear.

The living are real fond of linear. The dead...not so much.

Friday 56 (55% on my Kindle from the story, 2013: The Devil in the Wind)

Things are different here on the edge of the twilight. Black clouds streak the sky like spilled ink, and the broken cars glitter with firefly brilliance in the process of slowly - so slowly! - fading into darkness.

What have you been reading lately?