PROLOGUE<br > Tornado Road<br > 1996<br > ARA JACKSON EASED IIER husband Jack s dirt-brown Buick Oldsmo<br > bile down Tornado Road， which stretched out before her like a ret<br >clay river， rippling with thick waves of tire tracks and dipped with shallm~<br >pools from the footprints of her cousins， aunts， and uncles， who had live(<br >hem for about as long as anyone could remember. Tall pine trees leanec<br >in over the car， flickering Alabama sunshine through her dusty wind-<br >shield. The forest soon gave way to a clearing. On the left was a rustec<br >barbed-wire fence strung across an expanse of grass.<br > Sara rolled the Buick s steering wheel to the right and pulled up ir<br >front of her parents trailer， It was the summer of 1996. She was only six-<br >teen and was entering the eleventh grade， but she and Jack had just mar-<br >ried， and already moved into their own house a hundred yards farthm<br >down the road. They called it the yellow house. Maybe once it had sug-<br >gested such a bucolic sentiment， but the southern heat and rain had<br >stripped the paint and warped the wallboards and window frames， so that<br >from the outside it had the dreamy look of a reflection off the waters of a<br >still pond.<br > Sara couldn t quite articulate why she liked it better here than in the<br >city. Her parents had recently moved her and her younger sister Rebecca<br >back to Choctaw County after they had spent most of their childhood in<br >Mobile. There was less crack， violence， and gang activity in the country.<br >But the r，r~，~onc，~， or ，l-.~on，，o .f- ，k，~， ~，oiol ;11~ ，li，l~ t ，，，，it t eh~<br >