Beth Anne Evans remembers the fish nibbling at her legs in the swimming hole, the brown eyes of the calf at the farm up the road, and the scent of her mother's perfume... But she has other memories too, like the roar of the car engine after bedtime, the heat of the flames when her father's store burned down, and the pallor of her sister's face after the VW bus went off the road... Set in rural America in the 1970s, this fictionalised memoir beautifully observes and recreates an early childhood lived in the shadow of outsized adulthoods. Sometimes the darkness of Beth Anne's story threatens to overwhelm her - like that evening when even the fireflies desert her - but the light always returns, whether as the sun setting over Cape Cod or the Fourth of July fireworks exploding above a Vermont field. Three Before Nine pulls the reader in with unusually rich dialogue and vivid description. Author Bess Linnet invites the reader to trace young Beth Anne Evans' journey along the river of her childhood as it flows - as childhood rivers always do - towards the sea of autonomy.