The novel is a window to the lives, loves, and losses of four generations of strong, quirky Midwestern women as the characters reconcile the tensions between love and betrayal, sexuality and sexual power, racism and equality, and the coming of age and growing old in a family that forgives but never forgets.
A young, inexperienced lawyer fights an unscrupulous Fortune 500 company and an unmotivated government safety agency when her client is electrocuted on his job at a coffee factory.