Mara Karr is a wiry, sharp-eyed woman whose body seems assembled from rope, weathered leather, and stubbornness. Her sun-browned skin is crosshatched with pale salt scars, old knife nicks, and a long white seam beneath her left ear. Close-cropped iron-gray hair lies flat against her skull like a brush cut by wind. She moves with the quiet, balanced sway of someone who spent decades standing on pitching decks, even when walking across perfectly solid stone. Her hands are narrow and heavily callused, with ink embedded permanently around the nails. She leaves the impression of a gull watching a battlefield, alert, economical, and impossible to surprise. The contradiction is her smile, which is unexpectedly warm and almost grandmotherly when she is speaking to frightened dockworkers or children.