Plains Song: For Female Voices

Summary

Spanning much of the twentieth century, the novel follows the women of the Atkins family as they work, marry, and grow old on a hardscrabble Nebraska farm. Morris writes in spare, image-rich prose, shifting attention from daughter to niece to cousin so that the rhythms of female labor and silent endurance carry the narrative. The book is a quiet, deeply observed counterpoint to the male mythologies of the American frontier.