Excerpt from Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When she fell, she was reaching out for those clouds, but there was nothing between herself and the earth save the pale and heedless air. She broke her leg in two places, and she still remembers the pure shock of falling to earth, the foul taste of her own blood in her mouth as she bit through her lip. It was the season when the orange lilies appear in Monroe, wildly, randomly, in every ditch and thoroughfare, as it is again now. All these years later, Jorie still tastes blood when the day lilies bloom, and here, in the doorway to her own living room, on this fair and glorious day, she knows why she's never chosen to grow any of those lilies beside her own door, no matter how beautiful they might be. They only last for a single day, and then, no matter what a person might do to save them, they are fated, by God, or circumstance, or nature, to fade away.

Reprinted from Blue Diary by Alice Hoffman by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2001 by Alice Hoffman. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.