In 1943, realizing she is on the wrong bus, eight-year-old Rosabelle is dropped off and left by the side of the road. All she wants is to get to Taos-the place of her birth. Now, seventy-two years later, Rosabelle is the last person alive to tell her family's story. From the seat of an "Overturned Bucket" she recounts the adventures and traumas of her mother's life. Born before the turn of the Nineteenth Century, at a time when New Mexico was still part of the untamed Territorial West, and raising her children through World War I and II, and the Great Depression in between, Lenore relies on her strong survival skills. The second of twenty children, she is a hard-working, compassionate woman who never gives up her sights of a better life. Dealing with her alcoholic husband, impoverished conditions and a lack of education, Lenore does all she can to set her children on a better path. Born lucky, Rosabelle is her last child still living at home-a free-spirited, independent optimist.