Chapter 1 Summary

This novel opens with the happy recollections of a young girl, Katie, who looks back on her childhood with her older sister, Lynn. She remembers learning the meaning of the Japanese word, kira-kira, "glittering." She remembers her sister repeating it over and over, encouraging her to use it to describe the objects around her.

Katie also recalls the day her sister saved her life. That day Katie is almost five and Lynn almost nine. They are sitting in the middle of their empty road staring up at a clear, summer sky outside their home in Iowa, when a dog leaps from a cornfield growling and snarling, its long yellow teeth bared. The dog grabs Katie by her pant leg, her leg saved by a vicious bite only when Lynn pulls the dog's tail and yells for her to run. The dog then attacks...