New York, 1978. A dangerous city then, but one burning with ideas... A young woman arrives from Minnesota looking for adventure : to live, love, become a writer and to suffer the slings of fortune, as all true adventurers must. Four decades on, S.H. unearths the journal she kept that exhilarating, sometimes frightening year and the past springs to life : the kindred spirits she found in smoke-filled bars ; the mysterious neighbour, whose disturbing monologues penetrated her apartment's paper-thin walls ; the men who patronised her — and worse.
As S.H. measures her memories against the record, she regards her younger self with often rueful amusement, but also with anger. Why didn't she break the rules ? And why are women still fighting to make their voices heard ?
