Selina Peake arrives in the Illinois prairie as a young schoolteacher with a head full of books and an unshakeable belief that life should be beautiful. When hardship forces her onto the farm, she doesn't break — she plants, harvests, and builds a life through sheer force of will. But as her son grows up and turns toward easy money and shallow ambition, Selina must reckon with the gap between the life she imagined for him and the one he chooses. Edna Ferber's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a quiet masterpiece about the cost of beauty, the dignity of work, and what we owe the people who made us.
Selina Peake arrives in the Illinois prairie as a young schoolteacher with a head full of books and an unshakeable belief that life should be beautiful. When hardship forces her onto the farm, she doesn't break — she plants, harvests, and builds a life through sheer force of will. But as her son ...