Song of the Sparrow

Sometimes things happen, and it seems like the end of the world is coming.  Yet, when the trouble is over life is a whole lot better than it was.  That happened to me.  I remember it clearly.  It was, what you might call, a turning point in my life.  A lot of the decisions my eighteen-year-old brother, Harley, and I made were probably wrong.  Still, when you are a thirteen-year-old girl and have Frank Mattlock for a stepfather it clouds your judgment.  We lived on a farm outside Dunkin, Arkansas.  Frank thought the land belonged to him because he had married our mother, but I, Lugene Anna Canfield, vowed that would never be so.  I loved that farm.  It was in the northwest corner of Briar County.
The land there lay in rolling hills, cut and crosscut by sparkling creeks, like a beautiful rumpled blue and green patchwork quilt.  After our mother died, Harley and I lived in an uneasy truce with Frank.  At least we did until one Friday morning.