The child's earliest memories were of caring grandparents and the aromas of home cooking. He was a clear-eyed, open-faced kid, trusting as an unbroken colt. Then, at four years he was abruptly thrust into a horror film noir with strangers-a mother he didn't know, her great brooding ominous bear of a husband, and two other children-a household in the dusty little one-stoplight town of Desert Prairie, where perpetual upheaval replaced the certainty...