Cynthia Clough has a Ph.D. in English, specializing in the novel, from Florida State University. In this essay, Clough explores Mattie Gokey's need—and her hesitance—to find the unique story and narrative of her own life.

Early in A Northern Light, Mattie Gokey expresses pity for characters in novels who cannot break out of their stories and change their fates. She fears that the same can also happen to people in life, and that she herself is stuck in a relentless story that no amount of ambition, hope, or courage can help her escape. Her mother will haunt her all her life if she breaks the promise she made at her mother's deathbed to help raise her sisters. Pa needs her to run the house; the farm is losing profits since older brother Lawton ran away; who else can tend the cooking, the laundering, and...