i definitely believe in picking a book by its cover. this one lived up to my expectations.

some excerpts:

"If you keep quiet, you die. If you speak, you die. So speak and die." -introduction

"How is it that some people always know what is best for others?" -p. 111

"His mother...was a refined woman--but not so refined that she couldn't eventually tell me so." p. 272

"Grandfather didn't have time to build anymore walls, he said that now everything was held together by factory cement, but if he ever built another wall he would do it his own way, and hold it together with what he called cunning." p. 41

"The worst burden in life is what others know about us. But maybe there is one burden even worse than this. It happens when they don't know about us, it is what they think about us when, in silence, they force us to be what they expect us to be. Even worse is how we become it, and I...had become it." p. 248




This isn't just a book about a gypsy life. It's about the life of a woman who suffers and wanders and sometimes speaks and sometimes keeps her own counsel.