This lyrical autobiographical novel tells the story of Marie Rodgers, born into harsh rural poverty in northern Missouri at the end of the last century. Hers is a family nurtured in poverty: her father a charming but shiftless itinerant worker, her mother undernourished and overworked. In a world where the choices for a woman are marriage or prostitution, Marie is fiercely determined to choose neither. Struggling to educate herself, haunted by the family she leaves behind, Marie's restless nature cannot reconcile sexual desire with love and comradeship. Marriage ends in divorce, political involvement in imprisonment, a passionate love affair in betrayal. But through all this Marie finds herself. With the past conquered, a new future lies ahead.