Ardenia Dovie's Card Catalog

1974. Rural Arkansas. Twelve-year-old Ardenia Dovie Carroll ponders all the details in her life. To keep track of her thoughts, she begins a card catalog. No topic is too trivial or off-limits as she fills her daily index cards twelve lines at a time. Being the daughter of a hellfire and brimstone preacher, Ardenia is well-schooled in the wages of sin and the doctrine of salvation but she’s naive in the ways evil shows up in the world. Sharing her daddy’s excitement for a good old-fashioned summer revival, Ardenia helps him build the brush arbor in which to hold the event but, from the very minute Jude Powers, the evangelist’s son, arrives, her world changes. First, she has never been around such cruelty. She has only one word for it: meanness. Frightened and confused, she attempts to keep her distance. Then, she is stunned into silence when he inflicts pain that is beyond the scope of her understanding. Days later, the revival ends and Jude leaves, but Ardenia is unable to shake off what he’s done to her. Unable to turn to anyone, Ardenia prays for something that will heal her troubled soul. And she keeps filling out her index cards, all the while listening and looking for the goodness she still wants to see in the world.