Precocious 1

Precocious 1 covers the birth (in 1929) and childhood of Emily Allen, as told to her granddaughter, Hunter Bard, as an oral history project for Hunter's graduation requirement. It amounts to a detailed biography of 'Grandma Emmy, ' or actually a faux autobiography, since Emmy herself tells it. For the first 13 years of her life, Emily lives with her mother on a small, subsistence farm in rural Tennessee. She attends a local one-room school house, except when she has to help her mother on the farm. Despite the lack of any print or other media at home, she learns to read readily and is obviously a bright and curious child, determined to learn everything she can about everything. She is assertive, and insists on joining in with boys in their games and activities. Her curiosity leads her into dangerous situations as she learns about boys and observes the illicit passion between her teacher and the oldest boy in her school. When her school is closed for lack of students, she attends a four-room 1-8 school in Enid, the small county seat. The entrance placement examination puts her a grade ahead. She excels at all subjects. Entering 8th grade at 13, she falls madly in love with the teacher, Mr. Warner, young, unmarried, and academically demanding. When her mother decides she can no longer handle both the unrelenting farm work and an increasingly difficult early teen daughter, she sells the farm and gets job at a plant making uniforms for the rapidly expanding military. Assertive and resourceful Emily finds that Mr. Warner has a large house in the next larger town, Sawyerville, and arranges for her mother and herself to rent rooms from him. The three of them merge into a family. Emily is in heaven; not only is she living with Mr. Warner, whom she idolizes, but enjoys new resources, his piano, typewriter, and bicycle, and the local library, newspaper, and movie theater. She blossoms in all directions, essentially skipping typical teenage years to become an adult to impress Mr. Warner, with a goal of marriage in a few years. Her life in Sawyerville includes adventures that allow her to exercise her many talents, reporting for the newspaper, writing a play for the Methodist youth group, teaching herself typing and piano, and manipulating life to further her own goals, principally winning Mr. Warner's love. But she also suffers major trauma, and finds Mr. Warner has his own issues