Amy Spencer, the novel's heroine, is a 20th-century Jane Eyre. Not born into a family of status or wealth, she nonetheless had a good education at a single-sex Grammar School near Elephant and Castle in London and an upbringing which enabled her to mix in the various strata of society she encounters in the changing and challenging world she lives in. Amy considers herself the equal, both socially and intellectually, of the men she meets and she succeeds in a profession steeped in tradition and precedent which is male-dominated when she enters it aged 23. But dear reader, does she marry her Mr Rochester? You will have to read the book to find out.