Parents and teachers cannot possibly teach children everything they need to know to become reasonably successful adults. Children observe all the influences around them, good and bad, and then decide what to pull out of them. This is how the village raises a child. This is how the author's village raised her.Hillary Clinton's book, "It Takes a Village," made Cate think about the village she grew up in, and she realized that those people really helped determine the person she became. The author drew lessons from specific events, and these stories are the results. Out of respect for the people in the book, the names and the stories have been fictionalized, and all have been moved to Lakeville. But in recalling childhood events, which may not have been the way they actually occurred, Cate saw how to deal with challenges she met as an adult.