In this work, Holt makes a strong case for women's agency in the domestic economy movement. Focusing on the rural midwest, Holt looks at how women accepted and participated in educational programs run through the Children's Bureau and the Department of Agriculture, which served to make rural farm life more attractive to women. Her examples provide insight into early twentieth century life for rural women and the challenges they faced.

From 1853 to about 1929, more than 200,000 children and several thousand adults were sent west on "orphan trains," leaving crowded urban areas on the East Coast behind. Holt's book focuses on the placing out system--from its creation to its demise--instituted by the Children's Aid Society of New York. Estimates of the number of destitute children living in the streets of New York in 1853 ranged from 10,000 to more than 30,000. Charles Loring Brace, who became secretary of The Children's Aid Society believed there was no better place for vagrant or outcast children than "the farmer's home." Placing out removed destitute children from the streets of New York City, placing them with families in the west. The system was intended to provide Christian homes and families for orphaned or abandoned children while fulfilling the demand for workers on farms in America's heartland. The author also discusses other charitable organizations that imitated Children's Aid Society initiatives. She uses oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts to bring the orphan train era to life in this balanced account, highlighting both the positive and negative aspects of the placing out system. Her discussion of social and economic structures of the 19th century help readers view the topic in context. This is a "must read" for anyone conducting further research in the topic, or readers who are simply interested in this lost chapter of American history.