Lidia: My name's Lidia Simmons, and I'm 12 years old, and these here are my memoirs. I can't really tell ya much about me, nor my life, without first telling ya 'bout my brother Stu. All spring Stu's being kinda quite. Perhaps it was because a couple months earlier our father gone out looking for work and never returned. It wasn't the first time dad went away. Ever since he'd come back from Vietnam things haven't been just right. Mom held two jobs just to make ins meat. And we were still dirt poor, like everybody else in Juliet Mississippi. But this June morning in 1970 was different. All the flowers were in bloom, and along with the color, and sweet smell of summer, our father had come home.