This thesis contains the first two acts of a novel about a young girl named Isabeau Jones. After the mysterious drowning death of her mother, Isabeau attempts to find her place as a girl, as a student, as a preternaturally gifted baseball player and as an outsider in a rural East Texas community that does not look kindly on difference. Throughout the novel, Isabeau attempts to negotiate what it means to be female, academically ambitious, physically active and independent in a rural life that does not encourage such qualities in girls. While she navigates her tumultuous relationships with the men in her life, Isabeau also learns more and more about her mother and, eventually, she discovers for herself the kind of woman she can and wants to become.