Summary

The story is told in the third-person present tense. Georgina Requeni is six years old when the President of the Republic sees her walking down the street on her own. He quickly realizes she is the “most extraordinary child in the world” (11), and takes her to live with him in his palace where he showers her with riches. When he parades her around town in a glass carriage, a townsperson says she looks like a bear in a zoo, and this upsets her. When her mother and grandmother start to tease her about it, the President puts her whole family in the dungeon.

Time jumps with no break or indication in the text and Geogina is 13. She still looks back on the memory of their imprisonment fondly. She likes to imagine that one day a handsome boy will spot...