The sisters sat side-by-side on the hill, their braids hanging down their backs like loose tethers, straining their eyes to the next hill where the sun set. They could see the riders coming, created out of the tombstones of the cemetery. The sun glancing off the white stones and the shadows of windblown trees made them gallop. Kate is born in 1928 to flamboyant parents, Parke and Ginger Lusk, who raise her in a small town in Iowa to be strong and willful. Parke, raised in a privileged household while enjoying a country club lifestyle, is a charming gentleman and passionate equestrian. After returning from World War I in France and brief work in Hollywood, he eventually settles down in Davenport to work in his father's dry goods business, marry Ginger, and raise a family. Together, they weather the Great Depression, World War II, challenges of culture and class, mental suffering, and changing times.

The special bond between Kate and Parke is juxtaposed with her difficult relationships with her mother, an uninhibited neurotic with a Deep Southern heritage, and her favored younger sister, Maggie. At eleven years old, Kate is left to navigate their dark moods while Parke's desire for wealth and adventure leads him on a quest to the jungles of Honduras.

This is a story about the changing landscape of society in mid-twentieth-century America. The narrative, filled with colorful characters, touches on issues of wealth and poverty, prejudice, sibling rivalry, same sex attraction, and society's expectations of women.