“She spread out her arms as if she were flying. And weren’t flying and falling the same? Maybe, she thought, except for the landing.”

The authors use the third person closed perspective to closely shadow protagonist AnnieLee’s thoughts at this desperate moment, when she feels that she has no choice but to jump from a balcony. The analogy of flying and falling juxtaposes the dizzying heights of AnnieLee’s career as a country music star with the inevitable swift debasement of being forced to jump from a balcony by her enemies. Moreover, both states imply dramatic action and a surrender of everyday reality—and express the dynamic, daring nature of AnnieLee’s personality.

“She’d been writing songs ever since she could talk and making melodies even before that. AnnieLee Keyes couldn’t hear the call of a wood thrush, the plink plink plink of a leaky faucet, or the rumbling rhythm of a freight train without turning it into a tune. Crazy girl finds music in everything—that’s what her mother had said, right up until the day she died.”

This excerpt establishes AnnieLee as a natural musician, who finds music in everyday things long before she has had access to a traditional instrument. The use of onomatopoeia in the “plink plink plink” description of the dripping faucet creates a vivid picture of a young AnnieLee being enchanted by her everyday sonic landscape. The memory of her mother’s view that AnnieLee found music in everything contributes to AnnieLee’s view of herself as a musician and establishes the sense that she was born for a life in music, without recourse to training.