Winds of Blame is set in a small rural community in west Texas in 1916.

Greenfields is an imaginary place and could be any community of farms connected by a small country store and a schoolhouse. There are accurate descriptions of lives of Texas farmers at that time, a rabbit drive, the transition from horses to automobiles, a oneroom school that doubles as a nondenominational church on Sundays.

There are descriptions of traveling ministers, quilting bees and hope chests. The only teacher boards in the home of someone in the community.

The portrayal of women as traditional homemakers is consistent with the setting of the book. Although both female main characters have aspirations of going to college to become teachers, one of their mothers informs her daughter that "girls don't leave home except to get married." That women ought to have the right to vote is called a "queer...