Leila Landsman is the character perhaps most closely allied with Piercy herself. A married, middle-age academic, an associate professor and expert on abused women, she frequently writes of cases considered too sordid or sensational for academic accolades.

Hence, Leila is regarded an outcast of sorts within collegial circles; she is not liberal enough for the "true" feminists in her department, and is too liberal for the Ladies Guild. Leila has long known her theater-director husband has affairs with young actresses he casts, but it takes the death of her best female friend for Leila to acknowledge how shallow her marriage has become.

Leila accepts a contract to write a book about Becky Burgess, a young woman accused, with her teenage lover, of murdering her husband.

Becky Burgess "grew up longing to escape the overcrowded, shabby house where her fisherman father and gentle mother raised seven children in undisguised...