Anna Friedrich is a young girl growing up in the hills of southwest Missouri, fifteen years after the end of the Civil War. As the community around her is attempting to recover from that conflict, Anna's family suffers a tragic loss and begins to disintegrate. Anna is placed in servitude by her father and abandoned. She is determined to make the most of it but encounters another life-altering trauma. Cast adrift again, she must reach within herself to overcome the odds she faces.DEVIL'S LANE is rich in its portrayal of life in rural Taney County, Missouri, in the 1880s, with a wide cast of characters involved in human situations: hostility and kindness; tragedy and hope; jealousy and unselfishness.