As Loreda stared out across the San Joaquin Valley, she felt a hunger open up inside her, one she’d never imagined. Seeing all of this unexpected beauty, such colors, such majesty, she wanted suddenly to see more. America the Beautiful—the wild blue Pacific, the snarling Atlantic, the Rockies. All the places she and Daddy had dreamed of seeing. She wondered what San Francisco looked like, the city built on hills, or Los Angeles, with its white-sand beaches and groves of orange trees.
