text:  The details of her life are excruciating. Her father is severely injured in a knife attack, and her mother dies working in a coal mine. June remains determined to get an education. I think there's something tremendously liberating about having nothing to lose. And so for June, for some of the other characters and their mothers to some extent, the decision to jump into an unknown life comes from knowing that if they were to stay on the farm, there'd not be very much left for them.