A New York Public Library superintendent's wife reevaluates her priorities upon joining a woman's suffrage group in 1913, decades before her granddaughter's efforts to save an exhibit expose tragic family secrets.

1913. Laura Lyons's husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building. But Laura wants more, and applies to the Columbia Journalism School. As her studies take her all over the city, she finds herself drawn to Greenwich Village's Heterodoxy Club-- a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women's rights. When valuable books are stolen at the library, she's forced to confront her shifting priorities head on. Eighty years later, 1993. Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, famous essayist Laura Lyons. Her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes, and books for the exhibit begin disappearing from the library's famous Berg Collection. Things become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage-- truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history. -- adapted from back cover