Iowa is the starting place of Amy Harper Bellafonte’s story and the setting for Jeanette’s early effort to build a life for them both. The state’s small-town work and family ties offer a fragile home, but after Jeanette loses her father and her jobs, that home gives way to repeated departures.

Setting and early life

Jeanette names her daughter Amy Harper Bellafonte in Iowa. Amy’s first name honors Jeanette’s mother, who died when Jeanette was young; Harper comes from Harper Lee, whose novel was Jeanette’s favorite. She had imagined her daughter growing up tough, funny, and wise, and chose a name she would not have to explain. Amy’s father, Bill Reynolds, had met Jeanette at the diner where she worked, but he was married and had a family in Nebraska. Jeanette did not tell her father his name, and Amy was given the Bellafonte surname rather than Reynolds.

Jeanette’s father dies when Amy is three, leaving Jeanette to support them on her diner wages. Her brother, serving in the Navy, does not answer her letters. The loss narrows an already precarious life: Jeanette still has work, but she doubts the income will be enough for Amy and the household.

Work, hardship, and departure

Jeanette later takes cleaning work while continuing to care for Amy. When she tells a coworker that she sometimes leaves Amy alone, the coworker reports her and the superintendent fires her. Jeanette leaves with her last check, but a car breakdown and the cost of replacing its battery deepen the crisis; by then she has also lost her job at the diner. With little money, she packs their belongings into grocery sacks and cartons Bill had left behind and leaves their Iowa home.

The abandoned house records the permanence of that departure. Its pipes freeze and burst, the utility company eventually shuts off the water, and animals take over the empty rooms. Jeanette and Amy’s former home becomes a place no longer maintained by its occupants, while mother and daughter continue elsewhere.

Narrative significance

Iowa establishes the intimate scale of Amy’s beginnings before the story’s larger transformations. Her identity is first formed through Jeanette’s choices of name and care, while the state’s sequence of lost support, unstable work, and failing transportation explains why their life becomes a journey. The contrast between Jeanette’s promise to be there whenever Amy cries and the practical insecurity surrounding them gives the departure its emotional weight without making Iowa a secure refuge.