When the financial devastation of the Great Depression reaches Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Cassie Clark's lumber baron father becomes an unwitting player in the Chicago underworld where rum and children have become precious commodities. Cassie leaves town to hide her past, but alone to solve her problems, she gains strength in her own abilities and finds a way to recreate herself. Cassie wants a man to love the woman she has become. But will anyone overlook her tainted past?

Written by local historian Patricia A. Hawkenson, the novel Born with a Tarnished Spoon is a tapestry of life and loss in the 1930s, bringing to light the day-to-day struggles from assault to unwanted pregnancies, loss, and loneliness that girls and women still struggle with today.