Carol, a young and romantic woman dreams of transforming the boring small town of Gopher Prairie when she marries Dr. Will Kennicott and moves with him to this town. She becomes a member of a group of socially prominent wives who call "the Jolly Seventeen," but they take umbrage at her sympathy for what was at that time a largely Scandinavian and German working class. Carol's dreams are broken by the reality of a middle class, petty, committed on its own security and on the preservation of the status...