Flowering mimosa

the long version

As various tensions threaten to break the family apart, Tamsen Wingfield reacts most strongly. She cannot accept her new stepmother, married too soon after her mother's death. She cannot accept the new life of her father--once a strong, confident Texas farmer, now a lead miner working miles below the surface in a strange territory her high school textbooks cannot explain. Her flight from family and country is both an illusory attempt to recapture her youth and a courageous act of survival.