New Book Follows Two Times Lines in the Life of a Woman Forced to Reinterpret Her Past and Her Present Facing Bulls follows two time lines in the life of Mary Jane Allen, who, after the sudden death of her husband, struggles to deal with grief and subsequently with a shocking and disillusioning revelation that changes the way she interprets her entire life. The narrative moves between her rural childhood in Chocohalla, Alabama, in the late 1940s and 1950s, and her current life as a college teacher in Huntsville, Alabama, in the 1980s. As the narrative of her daily life moves forward, surprising and puzzling events trigger memories which she records in a personal journal. Her knowledge and understanding of her past, she discovers, is illusory and incomplete; preconceived ideas about marriage and love are shattered, or at least shifted. As the past and the present merge, she gains new insights about herself and her previous perceptions of those who are closest to her.