What do you think is the definining moment for the main character/person in your book? Why?

I two moments to consider for Molly's defining moment. The first was at a picnic while she was attending Gatewood Academy. Before that point, she had been sullen and antisocial. Molly sat and ate her picnic under a tree, not with the other girls in her class. Her teacher and soon-to-be friend Agnes sat with her and talked for a minute about Agate Hill and how Molly was homesick and missed her cousin, Spencer. Agnes brought Molly back to the rest of the girls, and they tried very hard to include her. Molly joins in making dandelion crowns with them. There were two girls attending Gatewood Academy with Molly that knew her from their childhood. They began calling out "Orphan! Orphan! We know you're an orphan!" as if it were a bad name. One girl, Eliza Valiant, defended Molly, saying that it isn't Christian to make fun of people, and that they were supposed to be kind to orphans. At that moment, thanks to Eliza Valiant, all of the girls rushed to Molly's side and she immediately became immensely popular. We never again see the quiet, introverted girl she was upon her arrival at Gatewood academy, we only see the happy, helpful, cheerful, and loving Molly she is for the rest of the book.

The other instance that I think might have been Molly's defining moment is her marriage to Jacky Jarvis, performed with the bride and groom on a horse on the judge's lawn. She was engaged to another man, but while he was away for three weeks before the wedding, Molly fell in love with Jacky, a poor man. They decided to get married, and he came to her in the middle of the night and they got on a horse and rode to the judge's house. This moment epitomizes Molly's personality, her desire to never be a lady, and to "live so hard and love so much."

How did the opening passage of the book (first paragraph up to first chapter) lead you to anticipate the ending of the book?

The very first passage in On Agate Hill is a letter from drop-out college student Tuscany Miller to her professor explaining why she dropped out and why she is asking to be let back into the program and continue her thesis. She says she found a box with a diary and some letters as well as other "phenomena" belonging to Molly Petree, and she would like to share them with her professor. After reading this letter, I expected that Tuscany and Molly would share some common history, or perhaps be going through the same experiences. This hasn't seemed to prove very true yet, except for the fact that they both have interesting family lives (Tuscany's father left her mother for another man then got a sex change, and Molly was an orphan who's uncle then died and was sent to boarding school by her father's friend and her mysterious benefactor whom she did not see until her graduation 4 years later).

This letter from Tuscany was really funny, and I was expecting the rest of the book to be funny. It's not. Some parts are downright depressing. The first part is written by Molly herself and is about her broken home life. The second part is written by the headmistress of Molly's school, who hates Molly for reasons never clearly expressed. She has a mildly abusive husband and has approximately 10 children by him, at least two of whom died, before being admitted into a mental hospital. The third part is written by Agnes, Molly's friend and a teacher at her school. She writes about her and Molly's search for a teaching job after they leave the old school.

What has the writer done to engage you, the reader, in a relationship with the book's content?

The writer, Lee Smith, has kept me engaged with the story creating the feeling of sympathy for the heroine, Molly. Molly has lost all of her family and was living with her uncle's second wife, Selena, Selena's new baby and two daughters, and Selena's boyfriend. The boyfriend sexually assaults Molly regularly, as Molly tells us when she says "Nicky Eck came I guess he followed me and pushed me down in the straw and did things he does to me but do not worry Dear Diary for I was not really there anyway I was up in the hayloft looking down and thinking Why look at that!" The reader cannot help but feel sorry for and therefore be interested in Molly.
Smith also engages us by changing narrators a little ways into the story. Simon Black, Molly's father's friend from long ago, comes to Agate Hill and takes charge of Molly, putting her in a girls' school. He brings along a teacher from the school to be Molly's chaperone, and we read a letter she wrote to her sister the headmistress of the school about how she found Molly at Agate Hill. The chaperone, Agnes Rutherford, reveals to us things about Molly that Molly herself would not have told us. For example, Agnes found Molly to be very dirty. The house was completely unkempt with very few furnishings.
After we read Agnes's letter, the narrator shifts again to Mrs. Snow, Agnes's sister and the headmistress of the school Molly will be attending. All this narrator-switching provides a fresh perspective from which to see the story.

Comment on the perspective from which the book is told and how the author's choice affects your relationship with the book's content.

On Agate Hill is written in the style of a diary. Its author is a thirteen-year-old girl, and it is obvious to me that I am reading something written by someone very young. She uses improper grammar and spelling sometimes, and it can be distracting. The more I read, however, the more used to the style I get. I think that the author tried to keep the language mildly authentic to the time period, which makes it even more difficult to understand. The author also doesn't use any sort of quotation marks or anything to distinguish between dialogue and the rest of the text. Somehow I haven't gotten terribly confused yet.
It is interesting to hear about the the end of the Civil War from the perspective of someone so young. She is not nearly as interested in the political stuff that an older person would be as she is in the marriage of her dolls.

Why did you choose this book? What were your expectations? Why did you expect what you did? How is the book living up to your expectations?

I am reading On Agate Hill by Lee Smith, published in 2006.

This book was given to me for my birthday or possibly Christmas several years ago. It was most likely picked out by the giver because the heroine's name is very similar to my own, so he/she thought I would enjoy reading something about a girl with a similar name. It is the fictional diary of a young girl living with her uncle after being orphaned by the American Civil war. So far, it is almost exactly what I was expecting. Almost all of her immediate family is dead, and her uncle just lost his wife giving birth to their son, who also died. The girl seems too young to understand the loss that her uncle is feeling. At the very discusses the jobs she did for her mother when she was dying, and then says that she was glad when she died. I predict that by the end of the book she will have matured greatly.