Here is an excerpt from the memoir:
Growing up Nancy

    We are somewhere along I-80, resting on the banks of the Platte River. Two Sandhill Cranes,
    silent as stone, also grab a break on the river’s edge. They watch us from  the other side of the
    coffee-colored waters. Two young boys playing near the water’s edge squeal and splash and fill
    their plastic buckets with dark wet sand, then dump the sodden mess onto each other's feet. I'm
    surprised when the large white birds spread their wings in unison, lifting their bulk with  ease
    into the vast Nebraskan sky. Stan and Iris sit together a ways away from me, quietly examining
    a flat shimmering stone.

    Grateful for a break from the baby I’m still not used to, I focus on myself for a few precious
    moments. There is an achy feeling in the center of my chest. I’ll be home soon, I think, home for
    the first time in years.

    After Marion died, the very last tethers had worked their way loose and I saw no reason to go
    back, at least not in a hurry. Now, watching and feeling the sure current of this slow-moving
    river, I long to go home. I can hardly wait another hour, but with the kind of time we’re
    making in the old refurbished school bus it will be two days.

                                                                  * * * * * * *

    As the afternoon slips away, we make good time—sail our prairie schooner across Ohio.
    Cornfields replace the dreary Nebraskan wheat fields, and though it is still unbearably hot,
    there are more places here to find shelter from the sun. At lunchtime we rumble into a rest area
    somewhere in the middle of an ocean of farmland and lurch to a stop in the only sliver of shade
    for miles. Our benefactor, a broad-leaf oak tree, reaches upward to the noon sun. Once the
    engine is exhausted, we run up and down the bus, lowering each window with a clang. Though
    the cross-breeze is thin, we appreciate each tiny whiff of the countryside and its deafening
    silence after the constant noise of the highway.

    Stan is already outside checking out our temporary backyard. I see him lean against the trunk
    of the tree and stretch his legs. Despite the heat and her hunger, Iris is singing a loud song in
    her special language and banging a wooden spoon on the tray of her high chair.

    Maybe it’s the racket we’re making inside the bus, but I haven’t heard the truck pull up. Outside
    my kitchen window there's a red pick-up truck and two men talking to Stan. I can't make out the
    conversation, but two shotguns hanging in the rear-window catch my eye.

    Crouched behind the curtain I hear them ask Stan if maybe he doesn’t need a haircut, boy.
    They would be glad to oblige. One of them lets out a hoot, and I know for certain that we are in
    trouble.

    Before Iris can make another sound, I have her out of the high chair and tucked inside my
    arms. She wears nothing but a diaper and a white islet bonnet. I don’t have time to think
    straight. I must act on instinct. They both see me at the same time and stop in mid-sentence or
    mid-gaffaw, like a freeze-frame movie clip. I too remain frozen inside the doorway, locked in a
    stare-down with these two rednecks.

    As though someone has released a gummed up reel on a 16-millimeter projector, the action
    starts up once more. But I do not move. I know I must be a sight to behold standing here in my
    kitchen door in the middle of a cornfield, holding my baby, my long skirt swirling in a sudden
    prairie breeze. I keep my eyes wide and unblinking, and when they see they haven’t scared me,
    they are again deflated.

    “You’re not going to hurt us, are you?” I ask them. I come right out and ask the obvious,
    knowing that if either of us run, mentally or physically, they will chase us like wild dogs.

    When the eternal minute has finally passed, they look at each other and drag their feet back
    over to the pick-up. The shorter one, the one in the cowboy hat and the tight jeans, hops up
    into the driver's seat and guns the engine. The other one, older and meaner-looking, runs his
    hands through his slicked back hair and then adjusts his rolled up sleeves around well-tended
    biceps. He considers the possibilities, looks over at Stan who has not moved this whole time,
    and then pulls himself up and into the truck and shuts the door.

    Neither of us budge or breathe as the back end of the red pick-up truck disappears into a cloud
    of prairie dust.