A PARTICULAR OBEDIENCE is a novel about three generations of powerful Southern women.Stockard Griffin awakes from a nightmare to find that her Uncle Abe has committed suicide. And so begins a journey from Sefer Farm, the family's retreat just outside of Nashville, to New York City, Stanford and finally Boulder, where she begins to move beyond the boundaries that her grandmother, Margaret Griffin, so carefully set for her.Margaret Griffin is the patriarchal matriarch of the family. She is the daughter of Seth Griffin, renown in Nashville for winning a poker game against an Old South heir and using his winnings to start Griffin Lumber Company.Margaret graduates from Vassar and finds that her father's lumber company needs her more than any man, although how she finds and deals with love will set the moral tone for the next two generations of women.Stockard is an unlikely candidate to reckon with the family history and its implications.A PARTICULAR OBEDIENCE is the story of two strong women and how they reconcile power and love.