Part One, Searching, The Generations Before, Summary and Analysis

Day grew up in Cleveland, Tennessee where her grandmother, Mary Mee, was born. Day has always felt tied to tradition, if at first only in her family. She loved hearing stories about her family growing up. In her opinion, people lose that sense of tradition when they become American.

Day claims that she and her family didn't look for God as children, but took God for granted. Though early on, they had a sense of right and wrong, but ethics and religion were different, though they connected over the matter of sex. Day grew up modest but did not feel shame until she learned about sex. They understood later that part of the reason was because sex meant babies and sex out of wedlock meant babies without fathers. She also remembers...