 Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them (murder and betrayal) is suggested as an epilogue to the pioneer experience.In her 2003 book of essays "Where I Was From", Didion turned a critical eye on this novel.She recalled writing it as a homesick girl lately moved from California to New York, and judged it to be a work of false nostalgia, the construction of an idyllic myth of rural Californian life that she knew to never have existed.