Book Beginnings ~ it's 1913, and we're in Tennessee

My book is Page from a Tennessee Journal by Francine Thomas Howard (2010), which was a book prize from Color Online.  Here's how it starts, unless there were changes from this ARC version before its February publication:

Annalaura Welles stirred out of her fitful sleep to the certainty of two things.  Husband John was gone for good this time, and even with the help of her four young children, she would be unable to bring in the tobacco harvest by the end of August.  Though this was coming up the second year she'd sharecropped the McNaughton mid-forty, she still wasn't used to living in the converted upper reaches of a barn.

Reading these three sentences tells me several things. Annalaura's husband has done this before ("this time," she says), so she's been expecting it to happen again. They are sharecroppers, farming someone else's land. It's almost harvest time. John and Annalaura have four young children, and they live in a barn. That's quite a lot to pack into a couple of sentences!  It made me want to know what Annalaura would do in such a situation.

If you want to play along, this meme is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.  Share the first sentence or two of the book you are reading.  (Sometimes it takes several sentences to get the full thought.)  Then, share your impressions of that beginning.  Click this link to see what others say about the books they are reading this week.