Ranger, Texas, 1940s

Ranger, the small central Texas town where Yvonne and Yvette spend the first ten years of their lives, defines the cultural provincialism and parochialism that both girls seek to transcend. Briefly in the 1940s when oil was discovered near the town, including on the tiny one-acre Crawford farm, the town enjoyed a period of economic boom and skyrocketing promise, raising a banner above the main drag that proudly and loudly proclaimed it the “Oil Capital of America.” When the oil quickly dried up, all that was left was the banner, a “dirty old rag stretched across the entrance to the town” (1). The town became, in Yvonne’s memory, a “ghost town” (1). The Ranger farm where the girls grow up is little more than a lean-to “hovel” (7) with three chickens all around, including in the kitchen where the hens mercilessly scratched up the dull linoleum floor. Even...