She had, she realized gradually, simply traded one domestic prison for another.
Against the backdrop of the setting up of a mobile library in 1930s rural Kentucky, exploited by those who owned mines, is the tale of how changes in women's lives tend to be the substitution of one prison for another, and of how, regardless of how independent a woman thinks she is, society will find a way to shackle her. Still, there exists friends in the midst of despair and people who have one's back.