‘‘I love you, Sissy’’

HAD ALWAYS CALLED my father by his first name. All four of us kids called him Dean, so I thought nothing of it until I was grown. Finally I’d asked Mama why. “Your dad insisted on it,” she said, a hint of anger in her voice even though they had been divorced for years. I had unresolved issues about the way she’d left our farm when I was seven, so I didn’t want to open the floodgates of criticism toward my father on top of everything else. I let the question drop—until March 1982, when I settled in for yet another long road trip to