As "A Circle in the Fire" opens, Mrs. Cope, the owner of a large, prosperous farm, is weeding a garden as Mrs. Pritchard, who works on the farm along with her husband, tells Mrs. Cope about the funeral of a distant relative. Mrs. Pritchard, a pessimist, dotes on calamity; Mrs. Cope, an optimist, tries vainly to raise the tone of the conversation. Mrs. Cope's twelve-year-old daughter Sally Virginia listens to the conversation from the window of her upstairs room. Through the girl's thoughts, readers learn that the one chink in Mrs. Cope's armor of optimism is her constant fretting about the possibility that a fire will start in the woods and destroy her farm.

When Mrs. Cope sees Culver, an African American hired hand, driving the tractor around a gate to avoid stopping to open it, she tells Mrs. Pritchard to stop him so that she...