How does Carson describe the town in the first paragraph? Why do you think she chose to start her text in this way?
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to be in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards, where white clouds of bloom drifted above the green land. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the mornings…So it had been from the days, many years ago, when the first settlers raised their houses, sank their wells, and built their barns.