“God led us here,” Annabelle whispered. “He planted a hope in your heart that was strong enough to send us a thousand miles across the country. There is a reason, and we’ll keep going until we find it. We can’t falter now.”

The prospect of Mr. Bittles gloating at her failure was palpable, and that night Annabelle lay sleepless in the bed she shared with Elaine, staring at the ceiling of the darkened apartment. At times like this, it was hard to remember how happy they’d once been. If their father had ever wanted sons instead of daughters, he never gave a hint of it as he taught his daughters the art of farming on the Kansas plains. For Annabelle, the most beautiful sight on earth was endless fields of golden wheat as thunderheads gathered above in an awesome display of God’s grandeur. But the rains didn’t always come, and years of drought had put their farm on the verge of failure.

Roy Larkin had risked everything to send both his daughters to college. Elaine was two years older, but they left for the Kansas State Agricultural College the same year so they could share expenses. Their father mortgaged a hundred acres to pay for it, even though their penny-pinching mother disapproved. After college, Elaine returned to the farm while Annabelle stayed to work in a laboratory that was developing new strains of drought-resistant wheat. She even sent some to her father to test on patches of their farm, but so far they’d had only middling success.

Then Annabelle got clobbered with a case of the flu so bad that the doctor feared for her life. Elaine came to nurse her but ultimately caught the terrible illness too. It hadn’t been the flu but a dangerous case of viral meningitis. They both survived, but Elaine’s vision started failing almost immediately, and within a month she was blind.

Robbed of her eyesight and ability to make any useful contribution at the farm, Elaine sank into crippling depression. Over time she learned to read braille to occupy her mind, but braille books were shockingly expensive and hard to find. It was their father’s insatiable quest to find more braille books that led to the discovery that the Library of Congress had an educational program for the blind.

The entire focus of Elaine’s world shifted toward a new and exciting possibility in Washington. The chance to volunteer at the world’s grandest library was a shining talisman in Elaine’s dark world, and Annabelle agreed to take her to Washington. One of the professors she worked for at the college knew Dr. Norwood, and a temporary position was found for Annabelle at the Smithsonian. It was rare for a woman to land a professional position, so she was especially grateful for the six-month appointment.