I suppose this is a very clever way to get Angie to read her historical fictions (it's like getting me to eat vegetables). Start it off as a sci-fi because it's set in the year 2065 and then get your history in through letters and diaries, reading about the Dust Bowl and then further still after the first World War. Then string you through the decades and centuries with a family of strong women, making sacrifices and decisions that may affect just the life of a sick sister or the lives of an entire planet. This book did a great job not only creating some wonderful, strong, and dimensional female characters, it also is a great book about how we treat the planet. It was the removal of the grasses for farming that caused the dust bowl, and it's our current negligence to do something about global warming that creates another disaster like the Dust Bowl, but on a global scale. Very good, Jodi Lynn Anderson, very creative.