Cimarron by Edna Ferber

Cim was nineteen, Donna fifteen. And now Sabra lived quite alone in the new house on Kihekah Street, except for a colored woman servant sent from Kansas. She ran the paper alone, as she wished it run. She ordered the house as she wished it. She very nearly ran the town of Osage. She was a power in the Territory. And Yancey was gone, Cim was gone, Donna was gone. Sabra had refused to compromise with life, and life had take matters out of her hands.

Donna was away at an Eastern finishing school -- Miss Dignum's on the Hudson. Yancey had opposed that, of course. It had been Sabra's idea to send Donna east to school.