Although terrified by what she must do, thirteen year old Billie Leclair uses her wits and prestigious memory to save her mother and sister from starvation. MYTH OF THE GIVENis the eventful story of Billie and her younger sister, Cathy, as they grow from precocious children to pretty teen-agers during the 1930 depression. This novel depicts life during a desperate times when many in the United States lost their jobs, their homes, their hope. A time when unemployment reached twenty-five percent. A time when suicides increased by fifty percent. The young sisters struggle to cope with their mother's strict fundamentalist religion and their father's alcoholism. Like other children in their neighborhood, they play games with their friends, improvise dramas for their movie star paper dolls, listen to Little Orphan Annie on the radio, and eavesdrop on adult conversations. At school students are disciplined with a wooden paddle. Teachers are strict. Yet school is a refuge from the girl's turbulent home life. Billie is kidnapped. Cathy survives diphtheria, often fatal before vaccinations against it became common. The novel begins like this: When the back door few open the two little girls looked up from their breakfast of fried eggs and bacon. A gust of cold wind accompanied Mrs. Athenas into the kitchen. Her stylish bob, blown into a spiky mass of black hair, flared out around her pale face. Her black eyes wide with remembered fear. She sat down across from the girls at the square wooden table covered with a faded blue and white oilcloth. She inhaled the warm air perfumed with coffee, bacon and fresh baked jelly roll, letting it out in a long sigh. Their neighbor, Mrs. Athenas' automobile had been forced off the road by rival bootleggers with machine guns. The gangsters don't discover her liquor hidden under Mrs. Athenas' young children sitting in the back seat and let her go. Billie and Cathy's father borrowed money from a loan shark. Threatened with physical injury when he cannot repay his debt, he leaves town. The sisters go hungry until rescued by one of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Their mother is unable to make the mortgage payments so they are evicted from their home. They move into a series of transient shelters: furnished rooms, a cheap motel, an empty store, more furnished rooms. Among their always temporary neighbors are a collection of fascinating characters: a young girl imported from Greece to marry an old man, a Polish widow managing the rectory of a charismatic priest, the owner of a small grocery store always on the verge of bankruptcy, a Jewess who escaped Nazi Germany, a woman terrorized by her husband, a talented one-arm man, and others struggling to survive the depression. At their mother's insistence the sisters endure long sermons in cold churches and sweltering revival meetings. Billie questions Christians who ignore the Bible's warnings that self-righteousness is the unforgivable sin. Christians who do not heed Christ's words in the New Testament: Judge not least ye be judged. Politicians campaigning for prayer in the schools despite Christ's instructions to pray in secret. Her father returns home with money to repay his loan. Despite her mother's warning it will lead them straight to hell, Billie and her father go to the movies. Hollywood productions change Billie's view of life. Her father is killed. Her mother becomes traumatized. The burden of supporting her mother and sister falls on Billie. Overnight she becomes an adult, the head of the family. Relying on what she has learned from ministers and movie stars Billie manages to provide for her mother and sister. Threatened with starvation there was no time for her to be a teen-ager.