Summary

Chapter 1 is titled “Different Kinds of Smart.” Writing in present-tense, the author describes the years of her childhood growing up on a farm in rural Louisiana, years in which she developed the love of dancing, the love of life on her family’s farm, and the love of Jesus. She pays particular attention to her affectionate relationship with her father, a much-admired school principal whom the author refers to as Daddy and who, she adds, strives to keep the memories of his time in Vietnam a secret. She also describes her sophisticated mother, who moved from the city when she got married and who seems, as the author hints at it, to have had a difficult relationship with a father who drank. Finally, she describes her two brothers, the older one (Lile) being popular and headstrong, the middle one (Tim) being loving and...