After publishing Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines, two very angry works of feminist science fiction, Charnas intended to produce a third novel in the series, but found herself unable to do so because, as she later admitted, she had not yet come to terms with her own anger. Instead she turned to supernatural fiction with The Vampire Tapestry (1980) and children's fantasy with The Bronze King (1985).

Although these are both accomplished books, Charnas may well have seen them as in some sense a withdrawal from her responsibilities as a politically committed novelist and thus as a sort of failure. Dorothea Dreams, as mentioned above, spends considerable time on the issue of the artist's responsibility to the world. Dorothea, who has withdrawn from society, is forced by circumstance and her own conscience to return to the public forum.

Thus Charnas's next adult novel, The...