Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1970) is the story of Tillie, a brilliant young girl being raised by her widowed mother. Shy and friendless, she buries her troubled life in scientific experiments. The broad similarities are there... but as with "Mystic," Tormé slips in some specific homages to make the link clear.

Here's how Marigolds begins:

TILLIE'S VOICE:

He told me to look at my hand, for a part of it came from a star that exploded too long ago to imagine. This part of me was formed from a tongue of fire that screamed through the heavens until there was our sun. And this part of me -- this tiny part of me -- was on the sun when it itself exploded and whirled in a great storm until the planets came to be. Lights start in. And this small part of me was then a whisper of the earth. When there was life, perhaps this part of me got lost in a fern that was crushed and covered until it was coal. And then it was a diamond millions of years later -- it must have been a diamond as beautiful as the star from which it had first come.

TILLIE:

Taking over from recorded voice. Or perhaps this part of me became lost in a terrible beast, or became part of a huge bird that flew about the primeval swamps. And he said this thing was so small -- this part of me was so small it couldn't be seen -- but it was there from the beginning of the world. And he called this bit of me an atom. And when he wrote the word, I fell in love with it. Atom. Atom. What a beautiful word.