This house of women

the long version

"The year is 1942 and cowboy Virgil Olms, "tall, slender as a fence post with a face as sharp as an ax blade, intricate as tooled leather," has gone off to war, leaving nineteen-year-old Hannah Hayward pregnant and alone. Her story, Hannah recognizes, is hardly new, but one played out weekly in "hot stale theaters where the couples all around were necking and groaning." Yet she could never have sent Virgil away "unloved and innocent." It went against duty. Nor can she bear to face her father. Fleeing his sure wrath and her Houston home, Hannah heads for Karankawa, "the prettiest little town east of Austin," Virgil had assured her, the closest of the only two places he ever spoke of returning to.". "So begins a journey of loss and redemption, in which Hannah, driven by fierce longing for connectedness, discovers that no woman's story is typical. Love, hardship, and tragedy carry Hannah to the Big Bend region of far West Texas along twists and turns reflective of anything but tired truisms. Laboring to nurture six children through the postwar fifties, the perils of Vietnam, and the Texas oil roller coaster of the eighties, Hannah lays, friendship by friendship, the foundation for a solid and unforgettable house of women."--BOOK JACKET.