Kathleen Leary Donahue is a member of a prominent Chicago political family who seems to have everything. As with a number of Greeley's female protagonists, she is in her forties, but as "sleek and lean" as she was in her adolescence, with "splashes of silver streaking her otherwise flaming red hair." She is pursuing a Ph.D. in history, but despite her intelligence and her apparent life of luxury, she is trapped in an abusive and unhappy marriage. Kathleen fits the psychological profile of a battered woman, staying in her marriage out of fear until her survival instincts finally take over and she throws her husband out. Kathleen functions to demonstrate that battered women know neither class boundaries nor IQ curves.

Kieran O'Kerrigan, Kathleen's childhood love, is a psychiatrist who has returned to Chicago after a twenty-year absence. Because he is a psychiatrist (a favorite choice of a...