Linney has long understood that her place in the family is to not make trouble, no matter the many ways in which her parents and sister fail to see her. When she is sixteen, Linney's father makes a deal with relatives to trade her for a boy cousin who will be more help with the farm work at their home in early 20th-century eastern Kentucky. Once her father's plan is revealed, Linney resolves to decide for herself who she will be.

Her story is one of what to do with betrayal, of learning to look inside her own self and to attend to deepest sources in order to make sense of the world and her singular place in it. Her time with the Chandler family shows her a different way for families to work, and she is especially guided by Aunt Hesty, the grandmother of the family. Aunt Hesty's own story connects with Linney's, and she opens to Linney other kinds of stories-fairy tales, myths-as maps for the difficult passage she wants and needs to make.

As she learns to ask her questions out loud, and to answer yes or no or I don't know to the questions her life puts to her, Linney also maps for us-gives "a picture in my head," she would say- for what it looks like to live by the truth of the heart: no harder work, no greater prize.