Leaping from the Burning Train : Slant Books : 9781639821440 : 1639821449 : 07 Nov 2023 : This is a book about a girl who left home without quite meaning to. One evening, doing her algebra homework, the sixteen-year-old abruptly realizes the tight-knit fundamentalist community she has been raised in may not have all the answers it claims to have. Then what to do with her familiar, immersive life: Sunday School, church, prayer meetings, vacation Bible school, mother-daughter banquets, midnight vigils, revivals, and car washes? In college, she discovers the language of poetry. It offers a path-through metaphor and imagery-that transcends the literalism and insularity of her childhood. Ahead of her lies a career as poet, playwright, essayist, and teacher. Leaping from the Burning Train tells this story in loving and exuberant detail, without the self-righteousness that sometimes accompanies contemporary memoirs by those who have left conservative Christianity. Throughout her journey