Gibbons, Kaye

Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

A mother-daughter relationship that spans several generations and images the effect of time and change on individual lives.

Cast adrift after the death of her drunken father and sadly misused mother, Ellen moves from one woebegone situation to another until she finally finds a friend.

A tale of a woman who shocks her well-to-do family by running off with a migrant worker who abuses her.

Emma Garnet Tate Lowell, a young woman born to privilege on a James River plantation, finds herself at odds with her father's practice of slavery, and in defiance of her domineering parent, marries a Boston surgeon with whom she works through the Civil War.

Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.