“…He had decided that the German retreat across the Ruhr meant the war was over, and he was not interested in counter-argument. He dismissed Diddens’s halfhearted insistence that in fact they were still enemies, saying he could not speak for Diddens but that a priest could not have enemies any more than a hog butcher could be a vegetarian.”
“He had gone half the distance to the gate of the churchyard when he seemed to remember something, a possible difficulty. He turned back to the jeep, considering the three Americans. He pointed to my grandfather. ‘You will find a shovel in the toolshed,’ he said. ‘An excellent shovel with long experience.’…”
– Michael Chabon, Moonglow, p. 142.
Chabon is one of those authors where you can turn to a page at random and immediately begin reading passages like this. Which is, in fact, what I did. – Indy