Weldon, an award winning journalist who grew up in the Chicago area and attended Northwestern University's Medical School of Journalism, where she is now an adjunct lecturer, reveals her personal experience as a middle-class victim of domestic violence. The book, based on a series of newspaper columns, is more concerned with the emotional experience she endured than a chronological or journalistic account of the events. The first section covers her victimization, the second, how she got out and in the final section, how she rebuilt a life for herself and her three young sons.