[1] It is set in post-war Sydney and centers around the troubled marriage of a sheltered, privileged young woman to a destructive, egotistical male.

Esther Prescott lives a sheltered, privileged life in a stone mansion at Sydney's harbourside Rose Bay.

After their wedding, Esther moves into a Kings Cross apartment with him; although charming in the beginning, he quickly reveals himself to be a tyrannical, egotistical drunk.

Prescott finds herself at somewhat of a crossroads–her passivity and stoic manner are tested when her married life begins to unravel at the hands of her obstreperous, manipulative and immoral husband.

Like all of Harrower's other novels, it went out of print in its native Australia for a considerable period before being re-published by Text Publishing, as part of their Classics series, in October 2013.