This first part of Jill Tweedie's autobiography is a view of herself as a young woman finding her way out of a repressive family background, dominated by her authoritarian father. It takes her through the antics at a Swiss finishing school to a more liberated life in Canada, where amongst other things she meets her exotic, but dangerously obsessive first husband. It is a portrait of a particular period, when women were moving towards new independence finally granted them by the pill.