‘She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her’   

When, at sixteen, Janie is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to and old man with sixty acres. Jane endures two stifling marriages before she finally meets the man of her dreams - who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds.