Beginning with an examination of Cather's Virginia childhood and the Southern influences that continued to mold her during the Nebraska years, McDonald traces the effects of those influences in several of Cather's novels. The patterns that emerge are often surprising. They reveal not only Cather's strong ideological connection to the pastoral but also the political position implicit in her choice of that particular mode.

Further analysis of Cather's work reveals her preoccupation with hierarchical constructs and with the use and abuse of power, along with her interest in order, control, and possession. The Willa Cather who emerges from the pages of The Stuff of Our Forebears is not the Cather who claimed to eschew politics but a far more political novelist than has heretofore been perceived.