The United States of America became the meadow that I discovered in my early youth and wholly embraced for its freedoms of expression of one's own views, its acceptance of personal differences. I came to explore its freedoms by simply being different, which, all at once, came to be a personality trait to be admired, rather than belittled and berated. Today, the strange land is that which I left behind and I have become a stranger to those I used to know and cherish." This is also the story of one fine American woman. "What country is this that it produces such a woman even though coming from the most difficult of childhoods? These beautiful, tough creatures who fight their way through thick and thin and, in the end, triumph over their environment and enemies? There are millions of those American females who, in their own uniqueness, manage this seemingly impossible feat of surviving the worst. Yes, Adelle was unique but that's just about the norm in this country, is it not?