Twenty years ago, Lindy hugged her dad with tears in her eyes and boarded a flight from Detroit to SeaTac. Behind her rolled a suitcase filled with newborn’s sailor suits, Dreft, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and not much else.

One month away from her due date and raggedly in love with the baby’s daddy, she sat on the tarmac without a ring, a promise, or a job. Aside from Joe Vogel, she wouldn’t know a soul in Seattle for a radius of 1,000 miles.

She should have been ashamed. There was every reason not to be a teen(ish) mother: economic advantages; mentors; education.She was a “good” girl, too. But the weight of before was there in her bag. And that heaviness she brought, it nearly dragged the plane into everyone she loved.

This is the story of a weird, unlikely life — the mess, the manifest, and the ships at a distance. How her improbable family of eight came to be. And why, fucked up as it was in the way it began — it’s imperative to have one.