No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.

The novel portrays the demise of a marriage and focuses on "the spirituality of female friendship. Anderson collaborated with Glasgow and provided copies of his speeches for her novel The Builders. " Glasgow stated that her third novel The Voice of People (1900) was an objective view of the poor-white farmer in politics.