Erika Dreifus

Every weekend I participate in David Abrams’s “#SundaySentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

There are people it is impossible not to despise, like Zane, a tattoo artist from Alabama who, together with a friend, flaunts his disregard for government and law enforcement until they are both arrested on charges of sexually abusing their daughters; people it is impossible not to pity, like Geneva, whose husband and son die within six months of each other, the latter after coming too close to an electrical line; and people it is impossible not to admire, like Teotenantzin Ruybal, stern, steady, and compassionate, who runs a homeless shelter that serves residents of the flats when a crisis strains their already meagre resources or a trailer proves no match for the high-desert winter.

Source: Kathryn Schulz, “What Going Off the Grid Really Looks Like” (book review in The New Yorker)