After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.

After her fiance is killed, Cat Calder, a Montana rancher's daughter vows never to marry, but sex with a stranger is acceptable. The result is a son and years later when the stranger is appointed sheriff and she faces danger her vow is tested

A "perfect" marriage dissolves when the wife makes a tragic mistake and her husband uses it to gain custody of their children.

"This book documents the decline of white-working class lives over the last half-century and examines the social and economic forces that have slowly made these lives more difficult. Case and Deaton argue that market and political power in the United States have moved away from labor towards capital-as unions have weakened and politics have become more favorable to business, corporations have become more powerful. Consolidation in some American industries,...