Leo looked at the contract, and then at the family surrounding him. The dust of the valley was in his lungs, and the love of his family was in his bones.
From this vantage point, Casagrande looked less like a house and more like a living thing. He could see the patches on the roof where three generations of men had hammered shingles. He could see the swing hanging from the ancient valley oak where he and his sisters had spent their summers. Casagrande
For eighty years, the Casagrande family had worked this soil. They had weathered droughts, economic crashes, and the slow, relentless march of time that threatened to turn their fertile fields into suburban sprawl. Leo looked at the contract, and then at