With too much time on her hands at home while Dick is working in the fields, Mary embroiders and tries to do the most she can with the house. She tries to study the language herself so that she too may command the natives. Mary notices that Dick speaks Kitchen Kaffir with the native house-servants and field workers. She and Dick try making love, but Mary is put off by the experience. Mary tries to acclimate herself to the rough life on the farm. She decides to marry Dick Turner, a farmer, and leave the town to move to his farm. She moves to the town and works well but is not able to associate well with other people, nor to marry. Mary Turner grows up in an impoverished family in Southern Rhodesia.

Dick Turner, Mary's husband, has lost his sanity and Tony Marston, a young man hired to take over Dick's farm for a few months, senses some unspoken terror among the Southern Rhodesian white men. Charlie Slatter, a neighboring farmer, arrives at the Turner farm shortly after the murder with the police sergeant they find that Moses, the native houseboy, has given himself up as the murderer. A newspaper announces the murder of Mary Turner at her farm.

Doris lessing the grass is singing