The book describes the hardship of growing up as a girl on a ranch in Phillips County, in a social context in which boys were more valued.

Although Judy acted like a boy, she still had to learn women’s chores and to develop as a woman, in order to find a good marriage prospect.

The period after their children were born is described as an exhausting time—taking care of the garden, three kids and three men, while still keeping up with the household work.

In August 1986, Judy left Phillips County out of frustration, with a divorce and three children, and within days she started her freshman year at the University of Montana.

Moreover, this model affected the presentation and the role of the other characters who take part in the story; All their actions and physical descriptions depend on the view of the author/protagonist; They are one of the figurative stratifications of this "onion" who is Judy Blunt.

Some critics also asserted that the narrative structure is continuously shaped in this production by a metaphysical presence or element that belongs to the liberal and old-feminists way of interpreting writing; in fact, as Judy Blunt says, writing was a way to escape the ranch sexist hierarchy and at the same time a concealed way to protest against a minor role of women in society.

This critique was made because, according to the reviewers, the reader is almost forced to adapt their view to the writer's in relation to these social issues, making more genuine the core of the book.

This could be considered in every aspect a biographical production, however, the author has a wide freedom in the literal and stylistic choices, as it is a personal narration of her life that goes beyond the writing style, but all the canons of genre have been respected.

[7] [11] The story is set in Phillips County on a remote ranch in northeastern Montana, where Judy was born: more than one hour's drive on difficult dirt roads to the nearest town, Malta.

As the author herself wrote in the first pages of the book, the town was blessed by a wide community of writers and therefore she had the possibility to get in touch with this world early and frankly.

Judy's bedroom, shared with her sister, had a foldaway cot and was next to the bathroom, which was provided with a wringer washing machine, a claw-foot bathtub and a pump used to obtain the household water.

[6] The environment which surround the story enforces the differences that came about between the "dutiful wife" and the "marlboro man"; in fact during those years women still lived in a sexist society, and the author enriches the stylistic choice of elements which underline the differences that occur between male figures and female figures.

As a young ranch wife, I wed my sixties-style feminism to a system of conflicting expectations and beliefs only slightly altered by a century of mute nobility.

[10] Judy Blunt has identified the wide range of writers in the community of Missoula, and is part of a Writing circle in the area.

Montana is a northern state of the confederation of the United States, near to the Canadian border, still featured by a wild and virgin nature and its position made this territory attractive for people from different backgrounds: Canadians, French, Eastern Europeans, English, Americans from the South looking for virgin and uncontaminated forests, and many others.

The university's Faculty of Literature is attended by aspirant writers, who share their backgrounds and ideas and stimulate the birth of new and effective writing styles.

Blunt's ex-husband described himself as "shell-shocked" and added that "a lot of people in this county are disturbed", while her parents were reluctant to discuss the substance of the memoir.

The author's former father-in-law accused her of fabricating a scene in the opening chapter, which was originally a classroom essay that she wrote in her sophomore year of college.

Blunt's former in-laws publicly repudiated the account, stating that no such thing had ever happened, and later Blunt admitted that she wrote that as an essay and when trying to fit her life into four pages for the classroom exercise, she wrote "more of a prose poem" and the episode was meant to be read symbolically, to represent what she had to endure on her husband's ranch.

Ms Desser commented that the essay "compresses the essence of her book the same way that an overture contains an entire piece of music," adding that she was not aware of the factual problems.

[15] Sales ranking statistics from Amazon show that up to 2016 the book has sold widely in the United States, Europe and Asia.