CHAPTER ONEToday is the day my teacher, Miss Stoddard, comes to see my parents. She sent them a letter telling them she wanted to come to our house to discuss �the further education of Nella Castelluca.� The letter is official, it was written on a typewriter, signed by my teacher with a fountain pen, dated October 1, 1924, and at the top there�s a gold stamp that says pennsylvania education authority. We never get fancy mail on the farm, only handwritten letters from our relatives in Italy. Mama is saving the envelope from Miss Stoddard for me in a box where she keeps important papers. Sometimes I ask her to show it to me, and every time I read it, I am thrilled all over again.I hope my parents decide to let me go to school in Roseto. Delabole School only goes to the seventh grade, and I�ve repeated it twice just so I can keep learning. Miss Stoddard is going to tell my parents that I should be given the opportunity to go to high school in town because I have �great potential.�I am the third daughter of five girls, and I have never been singled out for anything. Finally, it feels like it�s my turn. It�s as though I�m in the middle of a wonderful contest: the music has stopped, the blindfolded girl has pointed to me, and I�ve won the cakewalk. I�ve hardly slept a wink since the letter arrived. I can�t. My whole world will change if my parents let me go to school. My older sisters, Assunta and Elena, stopped going to school after the seventh grade. Neither wanted to continue and there is so much work on the farm, it wasn�t even discussed.I was helping Mama clean the house to prepare for our company, but she made me go outside because I was making her nervous. She�s nervous? I don�t know if I will make it until two o�clock.As I lean against the trunk of the old elm at the end of our lane and look up, the late-afternoon sunlight comes through the leaves in little bursts like a star shower, so bright