Josephine Becker (a.k.a. Felicia Stead)

In the opening of the novel, Jo, the protagonist and narrator, is a middle-aged woman. She is a successful veterinarian, a wife, and the mother of three grown daughters. She has a wonderful relationship with her husband, and they own a beautiful home that was once a New England farmhouse. The image of Jo in the opening of the novel would include the descriptive terms happy, successful, stable, and happy. A chance encounter with someone connected to a person from Jo's past sparks a series of memories that recall a time of a very different Jo.

In the late 1960s, Jo was in a marriage that she found unexciting, and she worked as a teacher and found that work unfulfilling. One day she quit her teaching job and soon thereafter took a job as a waitress at a bar. The bar exposed...