comment on setting

The novel begins in California, but quickly moves to Kentucky where Rose will settle for nearly sixteen years at a home for unwed mothers. St. Elizabeth's is located in tiny Habit, Kentucky, a farming community an hour's drive from the nearest city. St. Elizabeth's was once Hotel Louisa, a luxury hotel built to monopolize a life-giving spring that once burbled out of a farmer's dry creek bed. The hotel closed when the spring dried up and the building was donated to the Catholic Church while the land remains the property of the farmer, Clatterbuck. Rose, the main character, comes here to have her baby, but decides to stay in order to keep that child and to cook for the mothers, something she believes God ordains her to do.