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.