Gerald Burlingame, a corporate lawyer, makes only a brief appearance at the beginning of the novel. His "game" of bondage is the catalyst for Jessie's change from a passive, unfulfilled wife to traumatized victim and ultimately, a whole woman. While struggling with Gerald who has handcuffed Jessie to the bed, she accidentally kills him. Left handcuffed at their isolated summer cottage, she deals with increasingly painful memories of sexual abuse at age ten by her father. Her entrapment then forces her to come to terms with her own passivity, unfulfillment, and psychic wounds.

As Jessie struggles with her memories and her fear, voices in her head narrate her pragmatism, her terror, and her lost innocence. In time they become characterized as Ruth Neary, a cynical college friend that Jessie admires, who enacted the social and emotional freedom Jessie craves; as Goody Burlingame, that part of her that is...