The Author (Sarah Smarsh)

As she portrays herself throughout the book, author Sarah Smarsh was born and raised in Kansas, one of the United States of America often identified as part of the Great Plains. The book is her story of growing up in a set of circumstances defined by a number of factors, both personal and cultural. In terms of the former, her personal circumstances are defined primarily by her being born into a hard-working farm family, and by her being the latest in a long line of women placed into such a life by birth, by marriage, or by choice. In terms of the latter, there is a sense throughout the book that politics, as the author has studied them, played a powerful role in shaping how she and her family lived, and were perceived.

To be specific, the author refers several times to the political...