A woman reflects on her past: the man she loved, and everything she lost in her westward migration. In search of a better life, her journey was marred by “poverty and hardship and greed” (1). The men, she recounts, only talked about their hardships, discounting the hard work and suffering of the “women of the Great Plains” (1).

In the Roaring Twenties in Dalhart, Texas, Elsa Wolcott sits in her room with her novels and her dreams of adventure. A childhood bout with rheumatic fever has left her “fragile and solitary” (5). Tomorrow is her 25th birthday. Unmarried, she is already considered too old, a spinster. She is not considered pretty, and, at six feet tall, she is taller than most of the men. Her two sisters are married, but it is too late for her. As her family comes home, she announces she wants to attend college in Chicago. Her father, Eugene, a farm equipment salesman, dismisses the idea as “ridiculous.” Retreating to her room, Elsa resolves to create a life for herself somehow.

Held prisoner by protective parents and the shadow of an illness from which she recovered long ago, Elsa searches for an answer in her books. As she walks to the library, she notes the effects of the post-war boom on Dalhart: Good weather and strong commodity prices have allowed the farm town to prosper.