A multigenerational family drama about grief, motherhood, and coming of age, all taking place on an Ohio farm. Joan Chase's subtle story of three generations of women negotiating lifetimes of "joy and ruin" deserves its place alongside such achievements as Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping and Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women. The Queen of Persia is not an exotic figure but a fierce Ohio farmwife who presides...