Brother Ezra, Madame Aurora, Luna and Sol the acrobats—familiar names, and a few she didn't know. She wondered if Jack still had the parrots and that cantankerous monkey. The show was here until the end of the month . . .

The periods that got more emphasis were the ones for which I had more material. It worked backward from the way you might expect: if I had really interesting or revealing letters or journal entries for a particular period, then I wrote a chapter around them.

Daddy kisses me, hands me onto the skiff, / going home to explain it all to Mom, he says.