A chronicle of the author's hardscrabble childhood in rural western New York State describes the family members, first friendships, and early experiences with death that shaped her literary career.

Author's note -- We Begin -- Mommy & Me -- Happy Chicken: 1942-1944 -- Discovering Alice: 1947 -- District School #7, Niagara County, New York -- Piper Cub -- After Black Rock -- Sunday Drive -- Fred's Signs -- "They All Just Went Away" -- "Where Had God Gone" -- Headlights: The First Death -- "The Brush" -- An Unsolved Mystery: The Lost Friend -- "Start Your Own Business!" -- The Lost Sister: An Elegy -- Nighthawk: Recollections of a Lost Time -- Detroit: Lost City 1962-1968 -- Story Into Film: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" and Smooth Talk -- Photo Shoot: West Eleventh Street, NYC, March 6, 1970 -- Food Mysteries -- Facts, Visions, Mysteries: My Father Frederic Oates, November 1988 -- A Letter to My Mother Carolina on Here Seventy-Eighth Birthday, November 8, 1994 -- "When I Was a Little Girl And My Mother Didn't Want Me" -- Excerpt, Telephone Conversation with My Father Frederic Oates, May 1999 -- The Long Romance -- My Mother's Quilts -- Afterword.