In this series of linked stories the child narrator, Veve, cannot fathom all the mysteries of her family's life together, but by watching and listening she pieces together a painful past. Played out against the backdrop of rural hardship and deprivation on the family's Kansas farm, the secret in her father's previous life eventually explains his harsh treatment of the three older children and her mother's bitterness over his countless misunderstandings and slights.

When originally published in 1931, a reviewer of Black Cherries commented that there is "a sharpness about all impressions in the book, a keenness of sensuous and spiritual apprehension that leaves brilliant afterimages with the reader." Another described the series of sketches as "exquisite in texture and so faithful to the childish mind that one derives a warm impression of the imagined young narrator."