Fate dealt Middle2 and her three sisters the death card in "That House" in Somewhere Small when their mother died and their dad disappeared shortly after Middle2's fifth birthday in 1968. She became a ward of The System and spent the next thirteen years with three sets of surrogate parents, hired by The System to "foster" her care. For Middle2, life was as acidic as The Big River that flowed through Somewhere Small. But when she learned about Faraway Places while running her fingers over the plastic globe perched on the windowsill of her elementary school classroom, the began envisioning her adult life, filled with people she wanted to know and places she wanted to see. She would learn how to foster her own care, without relying on The System. At eighteen, with visions of The Good Life and trips to Faraway Places, Middle2 started her adult life in The Urban City, believing free will and the future were more powerful than fate and the past. But fate and the past weren't done with Middle2 after she left Somewhere Small. They shackled her until she was thirty-three, when she learned the truth about why she had become an orphan, and why she settled for boring men but loved bad ones. Truth, love, and forgiveness were the keys that freed Middle2 from her past. She didn't find The Good Life or The Simple life as a middle-aged woman, but she embraced her life, which was far richer than either. She discovered contentment through the power of love and forgiveness, and travelling to Faraway Places taught her what it meant to belong.