Ch 2 Never Far Enough Backstory
The second chapter of the novel, Never Far Enough, tells the story of McGhee on the eve of his eighth birthday. The narrator tells the story from some later age (we don’t know when) and folds in details about his family, his mother’s heroic creation of a quilt and the fallout from it at the local Catholic Church. All of this culminates as the family is in a car wreck on the way home from birthday shopping.
As for the details, I took some liberties. All of the material about the quilt are fictitious, though my mother did happen to have a job at the rectory. And as for the car wreck, that happened as recorded, right down to the popcorn saving my life. Or not. It wasn’t that bad of a wreck as it turned out, though it was a priest who did the wrecking. Irony is great, isn’t it?
I did manage to find an image of Bill’s Bargain, thanks to Facebook:
It was a marvelous place, especially in the mind of a five year old, only exceeded by Alands’ Toyland (also a Facebook find):
