Colonel Erbe's daughters have different views of woman's place in the world. The eldest, Dickey, is a confirmed feminist. Her younger sister, Petra, is employed as a cartographer in the US Land Office, rather against her will. She refuses to regard herself as a "career woman." The youngest of the trio, Agatha, is widowed in the first year of her marriage and returns to Washington from a western Army garrison, facing the need to support herself although she has no special training. Much of the story is seen through the eyes of Kurt Steiner, a veteran of the failed revolution in Germany (1848) and of the Union Army. As a friend of Colonel Erbe, and chief of the Land Office cartographic section, he tries to help the young women and becomes entangled in their lives. He features prominently in the consciousness of all three sisters.