Allegra Gordon knew there was much she could learn from Faith Hale. From the moment she met the esteemed writer and feminist icon on the campus of New York's Abigail Stone College, Allegra understood that Faith would be a force in her life, one that would wrench the best work from her and encourage her to lay her soul bare. The relationship that evolved would simultaneously be the most liberating and most shattering Allegra ever encountered. And it would change both women in profound ways.

From political rallies in the early seventies to soaring tributes at the turn of the twenty-first century, from confidences betrayed to liberties taken to freedoms denied, from a cottage in Maine to stone buildings in Manhattan to a farmhouse in Vermont, here is a story of women's lives unfurled and of a friendship at once impossible and eternal.