The novel explores the theme of gender discrimination and its negative effects on women. In the novel, a young woman, Adah, struggles against various forms of discrimination in her male- dominated society.
Adah is an ordinary Igbo girl growing up in Nigeria. her father dies when she is still young; her dream of pursuing education nearly shattered. She finds support from her paternal uncle to continue. She's denied education simply because she is a girl. She "enrols" herself in school. She accepts to marry Francis at a very early age and becomes a mother in her teens, she works to support her husband and children and aspires to travel abroad in the hope of better life, also she consents to Francis leaving alone to study abroad. She experiences a very hostile weather, drastically different from the bright and sunny weather back home. Francis is lazy and abusive towards her, she finds a job and works to support her husband's schooling and her children, she experiences racial discrimination; this is revealed in her search for lodgings and she receives intolerance from other Nigerians of different ethnic backgrounds. She is not put down when Francis burns her manuscript. She decides to be a writer. Already saddled with 4 children, she decides to practise birth control, she leans very early in life that with determination she can survive on her own, she never gives up on her dreams.