Walk to the End of the World and its sequels Motherlines (1979) and The Furies (1994) are works of radical feminist science fiction. The first book in the series depicts the culture of the Holdfast, an isolated and failing post-holocaust community set somewhere on the east coast of what was once the United States. The all-white, intensely patriarchal society is both decadent and sadomasochistic, the men acting like something out of the fantasies of a leather fetishist. Women are seen as being soulless, quite literally subhuman, and are treated exclusively as slaves and breeding stock. Further, they have somehow been held at fault for the nuclear war, much as women were blamed for original sin in Judeo-Christian culture. The novel depicts the life of Alldera, a young woman born into slavery in the Holdfast "kit-pens," and her eventual flight from the society.