("The Plain Sense of Things" by Pamela Carter Joern, University of Nebraska Press, 221 pages).

No guessing on my part: Pamela Carter Joern's "Flyover Fiction" novel, "The Plain Sense of Things," is a real gem, maybe even a gem-and-a-half.

With clean, polished and illuminating prose, Joern takes us through the highs and lows, marriage, divorce, children, disappointments, triumphs and sibling rivalries of several generations of one Nebraska clan. You can guess that in Nebraska it's not always easy. The smallest joy must be savored, for it has to last a long time.

The stories begin in 1930, when Gramps has to go to Wyoming to pick up Billy. From there, the narratives change by speaker, each a year or more later than the previous one, all the way to Molly in 1979. Mostly we follow Alice and her husband, Jake:

"Alice studies him out of the corner of her eye while he washes up. He pours water from the chipped enamel pitcher, dumps Boraxo into his palms. … She rolls the pie crust out on the table top. Her arms move in practiced strokes, forward and back, around to make the edges smooth. The ceramic rolling pin clatters and whirrs, flour dusting the red Formica tabletop."

It's a saga to be read again and again by an author who's already made a name for herself. Joern's first book, "The Floor of the Sky," was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and won the Nebraska Book Award.

Barbara Rixstine regrets not living in Paris in the 1920s.