Four women grow up in rural Portage County of Northeast Ohio, become horse enthusiasts, meet their husbands, and become desperate horse wives. These are the emotional, poignant, and sometimes humorous backstories of the four main characters from this author's book, Desperate Horse Wives. Although Becoming Desperate is chronologically first in the series, Desperate Horse Wives was published first. Both books are about relationships, struggles, consequences, perseverance, and horses.