Öglunda, July 12: The old family house is centered beneath big trees. Behind it, a wooded hill from which one can see Lake Vänern forty miles away. Nearby—hay fields, farm wagons, cherry orchards, stone fences, one dirt auto road lacking a straight kilometer, a stone church (next to which Kerstin’s grandmother is buried; she was born on the farm adjacent to this one), a lake, flocks of blackbirds . . .

—R.A., 1968