Set in Iowa in 1900 and in 1913, this dramatic and deeply moral novel uses complex but subtle use of flashback to describe a girl named Ruth Holland, bored with her life at home, falling in love with a married man and running off with him; when she comes back more than a decade later we are shown how her actions have affected those around her. Ruth had taken another woman's husband and as such Freeport society thinks she is a human being who selfishly - basely - took her own happiness, leaving misery for others. She outraged society as completely as a woman could outrage it… One who defies it - deceives it - must be shut out from it.
