Leigh Kimmel says:

It was beautiful country, if different from the Central Indiana prairie where Lily had grown up. Already she was coming to love the ridges and hollows of the limestone country of Southern Indiana.

She still remembered those terrifying days after the accident, when she had no idea what the future might hold for her, for her husband Roy, or their children. Yes, he’d brought the plane down after the student pilot had frozen and refused to eject, but it had been at a cost. And while she knew the new technologies could work wonders with burn patients, especially after his role in the famous Airlift of Life, after the horror of the Great Outrage, she had to be sure of one thing.

He will fly again, the medical people had reassured her. She’d clung to that promise, when she didn’t dare ask her more personal fears lest she look selfish.

And they’d been as good as their word. Roy was going back to his civilian job with FedEx. And the settlement money — she refuse to call it hush money, although she was certain the student’s homeland knew they were pushing through someone unqualified just because of who his family was — had paid for this beautiful chunk of land within driving distance of the huge FedEx hub in Indianapolis. Land where they could raise their children, where they could hunt and even establish a game preserve as a side hustle.

And where they could discover wonders, like this stone hearth, all that remained of a long-gone pioneer cabin. It made Lily remember being in grade school when the Bicentennial celebrations made everything pioneer exciting, including old-fashioned clothes and open-hearth cooking.