May Dixon has never met a problem she couldn't solve--signs of her "tinkering" are all over her late-1940s Indiana farm--but she never thought she'd be inventing a whole new kind of family. Faced with losing her husband, May pulls herself together and comes up with a plan. People think it's crazy to shell peas with a clothes-wringer, too, she tells herself. But it works. Alive with the sensory detail of a mid-century...