Morgan's writing style is understated, but poignant, saved from grimness by gritty honesty. The setting is severe poverty, at the beginning of the 20th century in the rural Carolinas. Julie is a strong and hardworking, responsible and mostly obedient teenager - not anything at all like our version of a teenager. Poverty permeates this story of a year in the melancholy marriage of a mountain girl of 17 and her 18 year old husband. Floods, fires, near starvation, joblessness, hard work, victimization, grit and the pleasures and responsibilities of marriage. Mr. Morgan really crawls into the head of a woman in this tale, better than any man this reader has EVER read. Julie is believable, uneducated but smart, with a simple faith - though hopelessness laces through this story from beginning to end. There is little laughter or light in this peek into the past, but simplicity, austerity and wisdom that is enriching.