"Growing up in hardscrabble Kentucky in the 1920s, with their mother dead and their stepfather an ever-present threat, Bertie Fischer and her older sister, Mabel, have no one but each other -- with perhaps a sweetheart for Betie waiting in the wings. But on the day that Betie receives her eighth-grade diploma, good intentions go terribly wrong. A choice made in desperate haste sets off a chain of misunderstandings that will divide the sisters and reverberate through three generatoins of women."

"Reading Group Gold" -- on cover.