The table that once provided comfort and even shelter had become a symbol for all that was wrong with the Quimbly family. In 1920, seven-year-old Josephine and her sisters sought protection from a raging prairie fire by hiding beneath their family s beautiful Norwegian wooden table. She survived, but the terrifying experience planted a seed of mental instability in Josephine. Just as WWII began, Josephine fell in love at a dance. Nel and Josephine soon married, but Nel was quickly drafted and sent overseas, leaving Josphine to work and care for their new baby, Saffee. Nel s absence was an additional strain on Josephine s already precarious hold on reality. Though he returned safely, their family was never quite normal. Throughout their childhoods, Saffee and her sister learned to navigate their own personal normal from day to day from their mother s unpredictable spells of arguing with imagined tormentors to her frantic painting and repainting of the old heirloom table, handcrafted by her great-grandfather. Not until Saffee went to college and met Jack would she begin to gain victory over the past and find the real gifts her troubled mother left behind.