The first essay is "Small Wonder," and Kingsolver tells the (true) story of a toddler that wandered off from his home in a small village in Iran and was found later, safe, in a bear's den, with the bear curled protectively around the child. Apparently, the bear had actually been nursing the baby. She calls it "an impossible act of grace." (5) She writes about hoping/insisting that the world is more complicated than a simple divide of good and evil, where we decide that everything has to be one or the other. "The changes we dread most may contain our salvation." (9) - A good line for the church, right? She writes, "It used to be, on many days, that I could close my eyes and sense myself to be perfectly happy. I have wondered lately if that feeling will ever come back . . . However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love." (19)