Sometimes, while writing this book, a question intruded: who cares? I snapped out of the reverie of my work, struck by a sudden fear that I was wasting my time, indulging subjects that had already been written about. While the question of who cares is an important one for every writer to ask themselves, embedded in my contemplation of it were more than thirty years of conditioning to believe that the subject of girlhood was not worth a few hours of a reader’s time.
