All 3 Uses of

palpable
in
A Thousand Acres

You felt a palpable sense of relief when you gave up and let yourself fall away from the table and wound up in the kitchen getting something, or in the bathroom running the water and splashing it on your face.†
p. 101.7 *

palpable = very apparent

Since then, I might have declared that I was "not myself" or "out of my mind" or "beside myself," but the profoundest characteristic of my state of mind was not, in the end, what I did, but how palpably it felt like the real me.†
p. 305.3

palpably = in a very apparent way

All I had to do was to imagine them, and how I "knew" them would shimmer around them and through them, a light, an odor, a sound, a taste, a palpability that was all there was to understand about each and every one of them.†
p. 305.9

palpability = the quality of being very apparent

Definitions:

(1) (palpable)
very apparent (so strong, it almost seems to take a material form that can be touched)

"Palpable" is frequently used to describe the intensity of an emotion shared between people who can see each other. The implication is that the emotion is so strong, it almost takes a material form that can be touched.
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

In medicine, "palpable" means that something such as a tumor can be detected by palpitation; i.e., a physician's touch.