Okay. The book is about a boy...teen, preteen... In the beginning, he's working at a farm or something, and I assume his parents are dead/abandoned him, because he doesn't have a name. This girl becomes his friend and tells him she's going to come up with the perfect name for him. The next few times he sees her, she says she's working on it, narrowing it down, etc. Finally, she comes to him while they're working, and says something like "Are you ready? Your new name is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA----" as her hair gets caught in the thresher and she's sucked into it. And I think there's no real sadness on the part of anyone else, because she was just another worker.
Time goes by, stuff i don't remember... jsut next thing i know is she's working for a woman who keeps sheep... he says something about their stupidity, and she yells at him- That the sheep weren't stupid to start, man bred the brains out, so it's man's responsibility to look after the sheep... And she has 500 sheep, and 5 black sheep, so she usually just counts the black sheep, because if *they're* there, then the other sheep probably are too, because they follow eachother... except that at some point there's a big snowstorm, i think, and a bunch of sheep, including one of the black ones, die...
At one point the boy goes out to watch the dogs, and whistles & waves to one to let him know he's there, but that's a herding signal, so the dog starts sending the sheep off int eh direction he waved... so trying to fix it/confirm, he does it again to the other direction... and some sheep get killed in the trample... and the lady thinks the dog's just lost it, until the boy confesses much later....
EDIT: The question is: what is this book?
(sorry, got kinda rambly describing it all. and my boyfriend tells be all about how stupid sheep are, so that part's covered)
