This book presents full portraits of eight Adams women, beginning with Abigail Smith Adams and ending with her great-granddaughter, Mary Adams Quincy. The book features Abigail Adams' fierce relationship with her two sisters and how she was imprisoned in a narrow sphere as John Adams' wife; her daughter Nabby Adams Smith, caught between a domineering mother, a rascal husband and a distracted father; Ann Harrod Adams, left embittered by her husband's alcoholism and financial dependence; Lousia Catherine Adams John Quincy's wife, who ultimately triumphed over family difficulties to become the Adams' matriarch; Abby Brown Brooks, who drew her strength from being Charles Francis Adams' wife and a mother; her daughter, Louisa Catherine Kuhn, who lived a rebellious, dilettante life; her other daughter, Mary Gardner Quincy, who embraced conventionality; and Marian Clover Hooper, Henry Adams' wife, who could never break her close ties to her father and eventually committed suicide. The underlying theme of the book is the pressure that being part of the Adams family exerted on each woman discussed.