"My grandmother, Mae Kirwin, scared me." With that disturbing, distant memory mystery novelist Mary Logue begins her exploration of the life of her mother's mother, who died when Logue was nine years old.

Mae McNally Kirwin was born in 1894 in Chokio, a small prairie community in western Minnesota. In 1926, the sudden death of her husband left Mae to support herself and her five children. She took a job as postmaster of Chokio, where she lived until her death in 1961. These straightforward facts are not enough for Logue. Who was Mae Kirwin? What was it like to live in her world?

Determined to get to know her grandmother better, Logue sets out to discover and assemble the bits and pieces of her grandmother's life. In the process, Logue takes the reader - and herself - on a journey of discovery. Digging through forgotten bank records, old newspapers, handwritten census forms, family documents, and faded recipes, she pieces together the past. Interviews with the few surviving family members who knew Mae bring vitality to the bare facts.

Logue slowly brings into focus a portrait of Mae Kirwin, immersing us in a lifetime that began with horse-drawn carriages and ended in a freak auto accident. Along the way, she tells a much larger story - that of a community, a way of life, a family, and a single woman's struggle to survive in a world that is both harsh and richly rewarding.