That was on a night in August. Dad Lewis died early that morning and the young girl Alice from next door got lost in the evening and then found her way home in the dark by the streetlights of town and so returned to the people who loved her. And in the fall the days turned cold and the leaves dropped off the trees and in the winter the wind blew from the mountains and out on the high plains of Holt County there were overnight storms and three-day blizzards.

A girl is different. They want things. They need things on a regular schedule. Why, a girl's got purposes you and me can't even imagine. They got ideas in their heads you and me can't even suppose.

This country's crazy in terms of fame and what people think it means. They expect a writer to be something between a Hollywood starlet and the village idiot.

Honey, Maggie Jones said. Victoria. Listen to me. You're here now. This is where you are.

Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up.

It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before.

I began writing seriously in my mid-20s and didnt publish my first book until I was 41.