Opening paragraphs......................

One of those days:  late fall, bare black tree branches scratching at a churning gray sky, days cold, nights colder.  The harvest was very late - record late - and moving fast.  The soybean crop had been delayed because of a cold summer, and then in the middle of October, with half the crop in, rain began to fall, a couple of inches a week, and didn't quit for a month.  Now it was dry again, but a landslide of bad weather hovered over the western horizon, and the combines were working twenty hours a day, bringing in the last of the beans and corn.
-John Sandford, Bad Blood