"It is a curse in this family that the women bear only daughters, if anything at all." So begins this elegy of the women of the Nebraska plains. This is the story of the Atkins family, who settle, farm, and raise three generations from the early years of this century. In particular, it portrays the Atkins women and the world they create among themselves. At the heart of the novel is Cora, the resourceful and resolute matriarch whose nobility is a profoundly sustaining life-force. Her sister-in-law, Belle, is a spirited woman who dies in childbirth. The mercurial Sharon Rose, the niece whom Cora raises, carries the story forward far in time and distance from the narrow life of the farm. Refusing to follow Cora's example, she flees to the sophistication of the East with a fury and rebelliousness that darken her spirit. Years later she will return to the plains to confront her flight and to realize fully the dignity of Cora's life.