My mother first left three years earlier. It happened one morning after she cooked breakfast. I watched as she gathered her keys and coat and walked into our wintry yard without any shoes. She left footprints as slight as bird tracks in the snow. When I asked my father later why she had left, he simply said, “Sometimes a person’s unhappiness can make them forget they are a part of something bigger, something like a family, a people, even a tribe.
-- Sierra (chapter 1)

Importance: This quote represents how Sierra understands her mother's abandonment. Her father is gracious and kind to his previously estranged wife because he wants to make their family work. Sierra, however, does not understand that her mother struggled so much becoming a mother at a young age and abandoning any chance she might have had at cultivating her own dreams.

I wondered what she was searching for and thought...
-- Sierra (chapter 1)