Choose the good -- The midwife -- Cream shoes -- Apache women -- Honest dirt -- Shield and buckler -- The Lord will provide -- Tiny harlots -- Perfect in his generations -- Shield of feathers -- Instinct -- Fish eyes -- Silence and the churches -- My feet no longer touch the earth -- No more a child -- Disloyal man, disobedient heaven -- To keep it holy -- Blood and feathers -- In the beginning -- Recitals of the fathers -- Skullcap -- What we whispered and what we screamed -- "I'm from Idaho" -- A knight, errant -- The work of sulphur -- Waiting for moving water -- If i were a woman -- Pygmalion -- Graduation -- The hand of the almighty -- Tragedy -- A brawling woman in a wide house -- Sorcery of physics -- The substance of things -- West of the sun -- Four long arms, whirling -- Gambling for redemption -- The family, morality, and social science -- The princess -- Educated.

Traces the author's experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family's paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn acceptance into a prestigious university and the unfamiliar world beyond.