{Do} Judge a Book By Its Cover {no. 3} // A Handful of Flowers by Rebecca Rash

In the last month or so I've had four new requests on my Requests page. It's very exciting--thank you to all of you who have requested! This was the most recent: A Handful of Flowers by Rebecca Rash, a short story collection published in 2012. Sorry the image is blurry; there wasn't any matching image on Pinterest (which I generally use now for higher-quality photos).

I see

• An army-green-colored cover.
• A sunflower.
• Maybe a little lupine?
• A road going off in the distance, with empty grassland around it.

I think

• Army-green . . . hmm. In looking it up on Wikipedia, I can't find anything about its symbolism--though it having any symbolism is probably unlikely. It's a war color . . . what else would it mean? But as I doubt that the color surrounding the photo would have much to do with the story itself, I also doubt this means anything.
• The sunflower. Teleflora.com says, "Their open faces symbolize the sun itself, conveying warmth and happiness, adoration and longevity." So this must be at least a somewhat happy story.
• Lupines, according to www.livingartsoriginals.com, symbolize imagination. A happy, imaginative story. . . . I am finding a problem here, peeps. Where's the conflict?
• Although, of course, this is actually a collection of stories. But I think the conflict, or something close to a conflict, is found in the emptiness of the land beyond the flowers. Could this mean either a meaningless, hopeless future--in the eyes of one of the main characters--or a bright future full of dreams which will one day fill the now-empty horizon?

Haha, I'm so bad at this. But anyway, I hope you enjoy my ramblings trying to figure out the inside of the story based on its outside. And because Layla asked me to, this is now a linkup :) Have fun, linky people!