Beyond the Window is a remarkable novel, about the reclamation of a piece of wasted desert land by planting the shifting sands with growths that will fix them and induce the formation of fertile top soil. Cory Aguilar, an orphan who has inherited nothing but her mother's beauty, aesthetic nature, and visionary love of romantic adventure, her father's businesslike head and firmness of purpose, and twelve hundred acres of undeveloped desert land in Eastern Washington. Chafing under the benevolent despotism of an acquisitive, Philistine aunt, who has reared her in luxurious idleness in Seattle and on an Edenlike estate in the vicinity. Cory seeks an independent existence in the land of sagebrush, and sandstorms. She finds that her "princely heritage" is lorded over by a mysterious wind, keeping her estate a terrible sand waste, a strange sort of evil that is beginning to overwhelm the adjoining ranches. Stranded and ill equipped as she is, Cory is left alone and destitute to face the dangers and general cursedness of conditions in a small agrarian town, with its envious malice, its backbiting gossip, its traducing intrigues. Success will finally come for Cory when she comes to learn that having a barren ranch is far better than possessing a barren soul. That the failure to be true to oneself has long tentacles that reach far and grip back many things that else had come in blessing to her who lies to her own soul. It is in this revelation that Cory is finally able to look beyond the window.