"'Born to Run' ... that's my whole history, and my whole psychology, and all my subject matter. I grew up 150-200 miles from any city. You simply didn't have much connection with the outside world. So my dreams were always to get out."¹

Bobbie Ann Mason was raised on a fifty-four acre dairy farm in rural Kentucky. Confined to an isolated childhood without any "playmates," she was "personally very shy, and probably pathologically shy."¹

For adventure, she looked to mystery books like "The Bobbsey Twins" and "Nancy Drew" stories. "Those were the only books I had read until I was about eighteen and so they influenced me a great deal; they formed my life and my expectations. The Bobbsey twins ... went on a vacation every single book and I had never been on a vacation in my life, so they led me to expect a great deal out of...