It is the depth of the Depression, and Ukrainian immigrant Teodor Mykolayenko has come back to his family on the Canadian prairie after serving a year in prison, having been charged and sentenced with theft, though the grain in question was from his own harvest. How else could he feed his family?

He would try again. This time, being a convicted felon, he couldn't take direct title to the land himself, so his sister, who lived nearby, signs the claim for him. It would be a good arrangement for both their families, as there is effectively no man in Anna's house, her deadbeat husband, Stefan, preferring the saloons of town to the sweat of the field.

Teodor doesn't mind the sweat -- it's all he has to offer. His wife, Maria, too, labors mightily to feed and nurture their young brood of four children, which about a year after Teodor's return becomes five.

Anna, however, is less inspired. With her enchantment with the world and its possibilities shattered by Stefan's oafish behavior, she develops an unnatural and unhealthy attachment to a coyote that haunts their locale.

But Maria and Teodor look after her and her children, and it feels like one big family -- until Stefan returns to claim what is rightfully his. After all, even though Teodor has cleared the fields, planted the wheat, built the cabin -- whose name is on the deed? Anna's, his wife.

Not even the fire that threatens the wheat crop or the mice that invade the granary are such a menace to the family's happy continuance as Stefan's reappearance.

This first novel by Shandi Mitchell has a narrative quality -- with a lavish attention to scene-setting -- which betrays Mitchell's filmmaker background. Many scenes read like page-bound transcriptions of an image or images in Mitchell's mind's eye.

On the one hand, the attention Mitchell gives to her characters' actions -- planting, tilling, chopping, dancing, sweating -- feels overdone, the mistake of a first novelist who tries to explain too much. On the other hand, the recurrent descriptions of the family's labors emphasize the ruggedness of the lives they lead.

Mitchell's prose is well-crafted and will appeal to those readers who enjoy detail-heavy narrative. Most readers will be attracted to the drama of the plot, which is well-structured and for the most part believable -- the thread involving the coyote being somewhat less credible.

As it happens, the book is based on a true story.