Karin Arvesen comes to Chicago in 1892, eager to establish herself as an independent New Woman and as a serious journalist. She immediately has a run-in with the most infamous of Chicago industrialists, Charles Yerkes, whom she vows to bring down someday. While she pursues that, she encounters the many fascinating events and people of that remarkable place and time: corrupt politicians, the 1893 World's Fair, the building of the Loop, the first auto race in America, and Jane Addams' Hull House. She also continues to search for who she is, and how a New Woman can be honest about love, finding that to be her greatest challenge.