At five and six years old, lying in the long grass and wildflowers near her family's house on the outskirts of 1940s Toronto, Judith Cowan was certain that what she experienced was the permanent nature of everything. Little by little, she comes to recognize threats: a leering neighbour asking strange questions about her gender, a lady who has died of an illness not revealed, the smell of something dead in the ditch. Her disapproving, resourceful, and frustrated mother, born to Methodist missionaries in China, tells frightening tales: how a pig will kill and eat a little girl, or how she...