In The Only Piece of Furniture in the House, Diane Glancy captures the language of the rural south in the tradition of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.

Sometimes the Humes lived in the Cajun town of Pole Cat Creek, Louisiana, where the children washed cotton bins, but the most permanent home for the eleven children was with their grandmother in Madill, Texas. There young and naive Rachel meets and begins an awkward courtship with Jim, a soldier at the nearby army base, whom Rachel's grandma immediately sizes up and pronounces "the enemy".

Rachel's rich religious and family background leave her unprepared for married life in the barracks, where the other young women shock Rachel by smoking and having affairs. Profoundly homesick, Rachel almost dies in childbirth. She must resolve the differences in her new adult life with memories of a beloved childhood.