In 1920s Ohio, the Tolliver household holds its secrets close. Ellen Tolliver has a gift for music and a fierce hunger to make something of herself beyond the boundaries of her small town. Her mother Hattie views Ellen's ambition as a kind of betrayal, a threat to the family's fragile unity. Grandpa Tolliver, weary and defeated, watches his granddaughter with something between recognition and regret. He once had dreams too. As Ellen navigates her complicated relationship with her mother and finds an unexpected mentor in the pragmatic musician Miss Ogilvie, she must decide what she is willing to sacrifice for art, and whether any victory won at such cost can truly be hers. Bromfield captures a particular American anxiety of the era: the woman who wants more than her prescribed role, and the family that cannot understand why she cannot simply be content. This is a novel about what we possess and what possesses us.
