The novel was published in 1912, the war will begin very soon. In the meantime, eighteen-year-old, innocent to the point of ignorance Julia from the Caribbean island of Nevis is getting married. To a disgusting, depraved alcoholic twice her age. Mom made up her daughter's horoscope and found out that this marriage would lift the girl to the top. And so it happened. But.... "He drank too much and had a lot of love affairs when he was young. I submitted like a faithful wife." A committed suffragist, Gertrude Atherton writes about the early feminist movement, understanding it from the inside, not from the outside. It seems that Julia's older friends, Ishbel and Bridget, she painted from life.