I just finished a novel called The Center of Everything (written by Laura Moriarty), about Evelyn, a little girl growing up in central Kansas in the 80s. The book is uncanny, both in its encapuslation of the era—the friendship pins on the shoes, the prevalence of OP sweatshirts, the ubiquity of the "Just Say No" campaign—and its depiction of the experience of childhood. This is a beautiful, authentic story (but not in that weepy, Oprah's book club kind of way). As the narrator says when reflecting on Anne Frank's diary, if it were a story someone made up, then it could have a happy ending. But because it's real life, anything can happen. Even the very worst thing possible.

As a child, I had a few things in common with the narrator, not least of which was my fascination with Ronald Reagan. Evelyn's mother hates Reagan, but Evelyn thinks Reagan seems like a nice man and she wants to meet him. I, too, thought Reagan was great. He had a kind of avuncular quality to him that made you think he would hand you a bowl of peppermints if you ever came to see him. When I was eight years old, I wrote him a letter, telling him all about myself and my new puppy and how I hoped he would be re-elected (Reagan, not the puppy). I am not particularly proud of this, but it does illustrate how malleable children are, how their value judgments are much simpler and based on different criteria. As children, we always endeavor to define ourselves in terms of our parents, whether wishing to draw similarities or distinctions. We either embrace what our parents believe wholesale, or we embrace a diametrically opposed view because we want to show we are smarter than they are. When we get older, of course, we realize that this is a false dilemma falacy. Why choose a black and white view of the world when there are a million gradations of color?

One other odd synchronicity I'd like to point out in this book is the brief mention of the Challenger disaster. Evelyn mentions that one of her teachers was a finalist for the 'teacher in space' program. This is interesting because my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Connors, was actually one of the finalists. This makes me wonder if maybe Laura and I went to the same school and I just don't remember (although I'm sure I would have because she's very, very smart).

The author also spends some time with the tricky social infrastructure of middle school/high school. Evelyn comes from a poor family and is the subject of disdain from the popular group. She is not pretty like the other girls, and her only friends are fellow misfits: a pathological liar and a budding thief. Nevertheless, she wants badly to be popular herself, and hounds her mother for an OP sweatshirt (which her mother claims stands for "over-priced"). I remember this phenomenon, how you did your best to amass the trappings of popularity because you were sure that this would mean the difference between inclusion and exclusion. It's almost as if the fashionable clothes and accessories were magical artifacts. You truly believed that wearing the expensive brand of jeans with the triangular logo would change things for you. Overnight, the popular kids (whom you simultaneously hated and admired) would adore you. They'd carry you over their heads like a hero. You'd sit at the middle of the lunch table in the middle of the cafeteria, and all the popular boys (or girls) would laugh when you told jokes and did hilarious impressions of the gym teacher. But, of course, popularity is too elusive for that. The social patterns and hierarchies in childhood and adolescence are far more entrenched than in the outside world. Grown-up geeks get famous every day (think Trey Parker and Matt Stone), but in school, there is no such thing as social mobility. Who you are on the first day is who you will always be. It's a pretty icky way to live.

Childhood is reputed to be a time of innocence and joy and discovery. Really, it's an ordeal we can't even put words to because we haven't read that Arthur Miller play yet (I'll give you a hint; it's the one about witches). It's a miracle any of us make it out alive. But as the book demonstrates, if we're tenacious and lucky, we'll come out of it all with a little bit of grace. Read The Center of Everything. You'll see yourself in it, even if you never wrote a letter to Ronald Reagan.