The rusted-out pickup rumbles down Main Street. A girl, all of five and all smiles, rides shotgun. The air is warm, the summer sun bright. The girl leans out the window the way her golden retriever, Lottie, often does. The wind twists and tangles the girl’s long, sandy hair and— The passenger door flies open. The girl drops to the asphalt and tumbles to a stop. Faulty door latch. No seatbelt. No broken bones! No stitches! The girl is lucky to be alive. Had she landed on her head and not the backside of her corduroys, she surely would have died. Or so the story goes. The bank teller, the barber, and the barmaid of Main Street will recount it for years to come, along with every eyewitness at Auchenbach’s Laundromat and Vi’s five and dime. Always they will tell the tale in the astonished, reverent tone reserved for the proclamations of miracles—the boy who walked away from the plane crash! the face of Jesus that appeared in a bowl of chowder! “Happened right in …