Dorotha is set in the Midwest during the middle of the last century. It is a time of great challenge and change: the second wave of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Depression and a World War. Dorotha and her husband face these extraordinary trials as well as a few of their own – perhaps not totally unexpected when a gambler's daughter falls in love with a man who resolves issues with his fists -- and there is dynamite hidden in their henhouse.

Dorotha grows up on a bustling farm, reading books every possible moment she can steal away from chores. Her farm lies just outside Decker, Indiana, population 468, a few miles north of the Mason-Dixon line. It is Raintree County land, where religious revivals bring snake healing as well as a few snake oil salesmen like Elmer Gantry. Decker is also located smack dab in the middle of tens of thousands of Ku Klux Klan members. In their home, Dorotha is one of the six daughters of two remarkable people, a gambler who wears two six-guns beneath his long white coats and a mother who, before her wedding, famously rode her horse bareback across Decker fields at night, clad only in a white shift, or, accounts vary, nothing at all.

Within a few years Dorotha is off to college at Indiana University (only a few miles from where Daisy Buchanan of The Great Gatsby's fame grew up) where she continues to voraciously read, She meets her man, Dave, when she spies his barrel chest competing for the college swimming team that will become a national powerhouse. She is determined not to miss her life's mate. While both their sets of parents are well-to-do, the family considerations that Dorotha and Dave originally ignored mean that neither set of in-laws support them. It is the depression, and the young couple live more poorly than hand-to-mouth until Dave takes a job with the Pinkerton Security Agency and subsequently the FBI in Washington, DC.

Unfortunately, Edgar Hoover soon removes the FBI from Civil Service and reduces everyone's pay. As Dorotha is now pregnant with their first child, Dave must job search again. No sooner does the young couple find Dave a blue collar job in Indianapolis, then the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Soon the Japs overrun Corregidor and capture Dave's father. Dave immediately enlists in the Navy and Dorotha, after unsuccessfully attempting to live with her mother-in-law, reluctantly returns to Decker to spend the war years praying for her husband.

After the War, the family settles in Indianapolis, a few miles from Dorotha's best friend and sister, Lois (who has married Dave's brother). As Dorotha and Lois rear their double-cousin children, Dave becomes involved in the rise of union, a movement that in the Midwest is interwoven with the emotions of the Red Scare, McCarthyism and the monumental changes wrought by America;s manufacturing revolution. Dorotha becomes a true believer in the value of the union to the middle class, and, one snowy evening, resolves an increasingly violent strike by dynamiting a factory wall to force management to negotiate.