A stark, elegiac account of unexpected pleasures and the progress of seasons. Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger's five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart -- water-stained and illegible in places -- but magnetic to Scanlan...