Florence's con
After saving her mother from suicide, Florence begins her pen pal writing as a means of escape. It is also the beginning of the Jet Age and knowing that her letters were traveling the world was a mild consolation to the post-trauma that she's enduring. Eventually the letters aren't enough to quell her writhing pain. She decides that she must come up with a plan to make an escape of her own one day. She then decides to start emphasizing her alter-ego in the letters (Cynthia <word for travel>). However Cynthia begins to grow inside her and take over. Florence starts to sleep walk at night, talking to the neighbors, (imagining that she is picking cotton) walking through the cotton fields.
Her family decides that the letters must stop. Her mother simply begins to hide the letters from Shareef. It happens at a convenient time because Florence meets Richard. Richard has big crush on her because she's so well read and has a desire to become a great writer, journalist one day. The two remain very cordial friends until college. Richard eventually tries to propose to her during the time she has to drop out and support her family. This is what causes F to try and start writing to Shareef again.
This time she is able to hide the letters, but is unable to hide Cynthia. Florence takes a job as a secretary, but Cynthia chooses to work at the Lyndsey Theater at night. Her friends never see her while she's working the concession stand, which allows her to continue the letters and plan for her eventual trip to meet Shareef.
Her friend Sandra is distraught upon the discovery that her friend has abandoned her, not so much because she abandoned her shortly after her child was born, a colicky one at that, but because she knew that Cynthia must have taken control of Florence and led her to Egypt. She had to get a hold of her, but didn't know how. They didn't have phones in the homes there. She only had Shareef's address in Cairo (finding it from her mother's hidden stash). She had to visit her in the sanatorium to find them. Where she discovered her mother's story, her money loss during the depression, her fear of dust storms since Black Sunday in 1935, her first nervous breakdown of 1937 when she got lost on her way to Dallas and eventually met her husband.
She is finally able to send a telegram to Florence, but can only wait for her to reply, if that is indeed where she is. Why would Shareef reply? What kind of man is he? She begins to read the letters to find out.