I’ve been trying to think of something I could say about this book that would compel people to read it. The whole reason I put my story out there is so some person, in this generation or the next, would read it and find hope. That won’t happen if they can’t find the book. So, I’m posting articles that might travel to that person.
SO WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL ?
The book’s story line is about an unplanned adventure, a spiritual quest that took a curious woman, bound by duty and conformity, through some weird stuff. When writers frame this type of scenario for the page, the expected outcome of such a journey is that the main character emerges changed in essential ways. She is reconstructed – new. And yes, I am fundamentally different from who I was before all those strange experiences changed – transformed – me.
THE TRAIL-HEAD
The story line of the book begins on the farm. It has to. A consensus in writing is that the author doesn’t start with backstory but sprinkles it in, scene by scene, along the story arc. That made no sense in this book. To show how drastic my renovation, I had to take you deep into the original landscape of my basic personality framework – the pot of soup this little dumpling emerged from. I needed you, dear reader, to feel what I felt. The first three chapters offer a taste of a way of life through which I interpreted the wider world, how I came to think like I did.