Chapters 1-2: Excess Baggage, Cutting Loose Summary and Analysis

Chapter one introduces the reader to the disruptive and emotionally bankrupt childhood of Anita O'Day. Anita's mother, Gladys, marries James Colton, once she discovers her pregnancy, early in 1919. The newly married couple move to Chicago where Anita is born and grows up. James is a gambler, drinker and womanizer, who barely provides for his family, and Gladys divorces him, having to go to work to support herself and daughter. Gladys is not a demonstrative person, and Anita grows up believing that she is unwanted and unloved, "extra baggage" for her dour, unhappy mother, who has neither friends nor a social life. A brief re-marriage between Gladys and James brings some happiness to the family, but it is short-lived, when James proves to be as irresponsible as before.

As an emerging adolescent...