This is the winding, troubled story of Xiulian, a woman from the countryside. As a girl, Xiulian disliked school and loved to play. She fell in love too young, left home while still young to marry a man from another place, and had two children. When the marriage fell apart, she initially cared for the children, but after her younger child was injured in a car accident, the father won custody through a lawsuit. Later, she met a partner from another village, but their brief connection soon ended. After returning home, she became involved with several men from her village and had a third child out of wedlock with one of them. He left without a word, and in the end, none of her three children remained by her side. Grounded in rural life, the novel chronicles a lifetime of separations and reunions and the heartbreak of being parted from her children, reflecting the joys and sorrows of an ordinary country woman's life, shaped by the choices she made when she was young.
