" 'High Meadows' is the third and final novel in a trilogy known ... as the Red Island Clay series."--Introduction, p. 1.

Mary Wasson had known about High Meadows as a child but first visited the Crossfield farm in 1924 on a date with Fred Lowden. She would marry him the following year and the farm would become Mary Lowden's home for the next seven decades. Tom would be the third child in her family of three sons. Ashley describes Tom as the chosen son, although the hardest to raise.