When Flora Poste is orphaned, she goes to live with relatives in the country - relatives who will have her because of "the wrong done" to her father. Flora finds a rural farm, replete with gritty characters and seething with imagery, and sets about tidying things up. She dispenses birth control advice to the hired girl, who gets pregnant once a year, and fashion and courtship tips to Elfine, who is in love with a local noble. Flora redirects careers, redistributes resources, and gets her curtains cleaned. She even manages, with application of travel and fashion magazines, to break Aunt Ada Doom's (who "saw something nasty in the woodshed" in her youth) hold on the family and the farm. A direct and funny answer to D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, and their disciples.