Dave Davies

It's a rural town, although most people weren't involved in agriculture.

Your mom, it seemed, was the rock of your family.

Tell us about her.

Going back for a second, you said your dad was an alcoholic who did not do so well as his later years went on.

And he was abusive to you at least once, right?

There was a family that made you lunch almost every day for a year or something like this?

So it really was a community.

The book is called Paper Girl, which has a double meaning.

I mean, you delivered papers as a kid to your neighbors, and you then spent many, many years working for a daily newspaper.

When did you start that?

Tell us about that, delivering papers.

You managed to go to college, to Bowling Green State University, and this was clearly a huge thing in your life.

You write that had you been born a decade later, you probably wouldn't have been able to go.

Why?

You described your mom driving you to college that freshman year.

And she knew that this was going to change things, that you weren't going to be coming back, didn't she?

Wow.

One of my funniest moments in the book is a typewritten poem that she gave you after I think you'd had this argument about – I guess she would complain about how short your visits were while you were visiting, which was maybe not the best time to bring that up.

Should we share that?

You mentioned that you got to go to school to get a four-year degree because you qualified for a Pell Grant.