Before The Lark

Though twelve-year-old Jocey Royal no longer goes to school, she reads. And out of her books comes dreams. Her dreams are her life, because she has a harelip and is convinced that no one will ever be her friend, that everyone will always chase her and make fun of her, as the children at school did before she quit. She wishes she never had to see another person. Jocey lives with her grandmother, a washerwoman, in Kansas City, Missouri. It is 1888,...