The novel is set at a tectonic moment in American cultural history, the mid-1970s, in which the country reexamined its perception of women and reevaluated centuries-long traditions that had diminished the place of women in society and in families. Centering on the lives of four very disparate women, the novel argues exactly what the women’s movement in the 1970s did—and what America needed to hear about women, then and now: that women are complex and no one-size-fits-all template exists for them.

In doing so, the novel empowers women to be exactly what their individual hearts and experiences tell them to be. Growing up in Odessa, girls had two choices: to get out of Odessa, either deliberately or recklessly, or to settle down, accepting a stunted and empty life of marriage and multiple pregnancies and a long stretch of tending to the home.

The story presents this theme primarily through the journeys and relationships between its four dominant characters—Glory, Mary Rose, Corrine, and D.A.—and many minor characters—Karla, who dispenses frontier justice to Dale Strickland; Tina, who shares an afternoon with Glory at the hotel pool; Ginny, D.A.’s desperate mother-in-flight, and the daughters of Mary Rose and Corrine. These women are at once strong and weak, selfish and compassionate, logical and unpredictable.