What do water and sunshine mean to a weed?

I was a skinny, freckle-faced ghost of a child. I had friends up and down my city block, but I was the weed in the garden.

Long walks on sweltering summer days led to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, where the canny gatekeeper, Margaret N. “Peggy” Coughlan, welcomed me in and opened her stacks of treasures to me.

Authors became my superheroes.