[Abra Phillips, the heroine of Gaining Ground, published in the United States and Canada as Abra] chooses, without obvious motivation, to cut herself off from all the social props supposed to enrich a woman's daily existence….

The life of a recluse has always been considered a valid temptation for a man, properly appealing to some romantic strain in the masculine temperament, whereas the woman living alone in the middle of nowhere is typically a witch or an outcast—at any rate, an oddity. Abra strongly repudiates the idea that she may be mad; what has overtaken her is not a "breakdown" but its opposite, a healing up…. The novel succeeds in communicating the charms of solitary living (sitting in front of a log fire, wrapped in a patchwork quilt), though it doesn't fail to stress the powers of endurance required to carry it through….

Joan Barfoot has resisted...