"Mary Coin" Marisa Silver

This is a story that has stayed with me.  One in which I keep thinking about the characters, even weeks after I finished reading it.

"'You're missing your future, boy,' George pronounced when Walker was eighteen and told his father he wanted no part of farming but that he preferred to study history.  'History?' George said, his mouth twisting into an expression of disbelief.

'Understanding the mistakes of the past so we don't repeat them,' Walked answered in a tone that, twenty-three years later, he cringes to recall.  Such arrogance.  A right of youth, he supposes, a necessity...

'History will get you nowhere,' George said."

*Read in 2013.