As a story of growing up, intellectual and emotional maturation, and the development of Self - not to mention as an intense and nearly unbelievable series of life events - this book exceeds almost anything I have read. It's past Angela's Ashes (memoir) or The Color Purple (fiction).

For some reason I can only compare it to the Autobiography of Malcolm X, even though the particulars are so different. (Rural, survivalist, Mormon white girl enters 21st century academia vs. midcentury black hustler enters prison, finds religion, international fame, and disillusionment....) I guess it's the sense that neither book could possibly have been as powerful if it were written any earlier or later in the author's life. It's the narrative about a mind, but one that is inescapably tethered to a specific body and hostile surroundings. It's abstract and still drenched in messy concrete events.

In six months I'll still be grappling with this. Full of wonder.