If you look at an atlas of the United States, one published around, say , 1940, there is, in the state of Indiana, north of New Castle and east of the Epileptic Village, a small town called Mooreland. In 1940 the population of Mooreland was about three hundred people; in 1950 the population was three hundred, and in 1960, 1970, and 1980, and so on. The book that follows is about a child from Mooreland, Indiana, written by one of the three hundred. It's a memoir, and a sigh of gratitude, a way of returning. I no longer live there; I can't speak for the town or its people as they are now. Someone has taken my place. Whoever she is, her stories are her own (taken in part from the prologue).