The novel begins in 1920 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where Jessica Radford listens to the very first radio broadcast on KDKA, which broadcasts the presidential election returns. Because of the passage of the 19th Amendment, this is the first time she has ever voted. Many years earlier, she advocated against slavery and pushed for equal rights of the freed slaves. Later, she joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other suffragists - not only for the right to vote but for other rights women ought to have, such as the right to speak in public, the right to have a profession, the right to have property and the right to her own children if she got divorced, as well as many, many other rights denied to them simply because they were women. It was a hard-fought struggle and Jessica relives it as she reads her a biography that her daughter had written about her. AND-all the while, unknown to her, a man is planning to kill her. How will it end?