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Meghann Dontess can dismantle a marriage before lunch, stare down an abusive husband by mid-afternoon and still have no idea how to speak honestly to her own sister.

Agnes is the axis on which the novel turns. She is not written as a passive historical wife but as a force in her own right—rooted in the natural world, attuned to bodies, rhythms, and patterns others overlook. Her form of knowledge is intuitive, physical, almost wordless, which sets her in quiet opposition to the structured, literate world her husband eventually inhabits. This tension between ways of knowing—embodied versus intellectual—runs beneath nearly every scene.