He began reading at night with a flashlight under the blanket because his father wanted the lights off exactly at ten. He read and felt something new, not freedom yet, but a crack. He was beginning to understand that what they told him was the only truth was only the survival system of other people.

At fifteen, his mother got sick. At first it was a cough, then fatigue, then pain low in the abdomen, then blood where blood should not have been. The town doctor said she needed tests in Wichita. Jonah said prayer would keep her. In his view, God valued faith more than medicine