Chapter 1EmilyToronto—May, 1961“Meeting’s in ten minutes, Emily.”
Emily Radcliffe nodded to her coworker Jan just as she disappeared from the doorway into the small kitchenette where Emily was preparing herself some tea in a battered, stained teacup that looked long overdue for retirement. The kitchenette in the office of
Chatelaine magazine was stocked with the hand-me-downs of the kitchen on the floor above, which housed the men’s publication and the administrative offices of their parent company, Maclean-Hunter.
Emily poured a healthy splash of milk into her tea along with a rare spoonful of sugar to jolt her senses in time for the meeting, then made her way back to the Closet to pick up her notebook and pen en route to her boss’s office.
The Closet was her pet name for the space she shared with Betty, the junior editorial assistant and one of the few people in the office whom Emily outranked. Emily had never been a particularly social person, but she’d had friends in grade school. Now they, along with the girls she’d gone to university with, were almost all married, many with young children. Unable to relate to their lives very much anymore, she’d fallen out of touch with a lot of them. Emily had hoped that she might find a kindred spirit in her officemate, but she’d been sorely disappointed.
The Closet was so small and had such a damp air about it that they had both raised the suspicion that it had spent its previous life as a janitorial cupboard. Still, two years fresh from her university graduation, Emily was thrilled to have a place at the magazine at all, even if it was tinged with the smell of mildew.
As the editorial assistant, Emily was responsible for reviewing and collating the monthly letters to the editor, and had helped edit and co-write some pieces that had other journalists’ names on them. That, she knew, was part of the job. But it was her dream to see her own name in the byline one day. She was ready for more.
Notebook tucked under her arm, she made her way down the long corridor toward the office of their editor-in-chief, Doris Anderson. Despite the presence of a large conference room down the hall, Doris’s more intimate office served as the gathering spot for their weekly editorial meetings.
“Too much open air in the conference room,” Doris had told Emily at her first meeting. “Ideas need to be able to bounce off one another. Create some friction. That’s where things get exciting.”
The magazine headquarters was noisy, as it always was, with the spirited cacophony of women’s voices, clacking typewriters, and ringing phones. Emily hurried past the art and advertising departments—where two of her colleagues were locked in a heated debate—and the test kitchen, where the food editor created recipes using everyday ingredients, prepared with average appliances. Nothing gimmicky, nothing gourmet. Just nutritious, inexpensive recipes that could be easily prepared while children ran about underfoot, and ready for your husband’s arrival home at six o’clock. As such, a distinct perk of the job was the almost constant presence of not-quite-right reject casseroles and desserts on offer for lunch and snacks to anyone who wanted them, and, on the last Friday of the month, office-wide feasts to give one final taste test to an upcoming issue’s winning recipes. They were probably the best-fed women in town, and they were proud of it.
Emily’s stomach growled, and she did her best to ignore the tantalizing aroma of potato and cheese in the air as she turned the corner into Doris’s office. She slid in and stood near the doorway.
The staff writers were perched on metal-backed chairs, clustered around Doris’s desk like a murder of friendly crows. One of them, Virginia, looked up at Emily and nodded politely before returning to a muttered conversation with Doris herself. Doris’s secretary, Clara, leaned against the windowsill that looked out onto University Avenue, her notebook at the ready. Jan, the fashion editor, was reclined in a deep-green velvet wing chair near the coffee table, slim legs crossed, clutching a cigarette over a beveled glass ashtray.
Betty entered the room a moment later, her face a little wild.
“Sorry,” she hissed. “Am I late?”
“Not yet.” Emily shifted aside to make room for her. Betty was often tardy after lunchtime dates with her beau, who, she frequently told Emily, was due to propose any day now. They’d been going together just about exactly as long as Emily had been with her boyfriend, Jeremy, but Betty’s very existence was tied to her boyfriend and the prospect of marriage in a way Emily’s wasn’t. Betty seemed intent upon winning a self-imposed race to the altar.
Emily had met Jeremy—Jem—at journalism school three years ago, after she’d graduated with her English degree from Victoria College. He was thoughtful, but ambitious and driven—just like Emily. They shared a love of adventure novels and art house films, which they frequently saw together at the Revue and then discussed over coffee afterward. She was very fond of Jem; in many ways, he was her best friend. But she was in no hurry to marry, a fact that seemed unable to penetrate Betty’s heavily hairsprayed little head.
Jem would expect her to stop working if they wed; she knew that much from some of the things he’d said about his hopes for the future. He’d asked her what hers were, but something had held her back from telling him the truth: that even at twenty-four, she wasn’t ready for marriage. That no, she might not want children, or at least not right away. She couldn’t even bring herself to tell him she’d want to keep working after becoming his wife, because that was as outrageous as telling a man you’d fancy buying a house on the moon. She’d seen from her mother and sister how much motherhood demanded of a woman. You had to give yourself over to it completely. It seemed inherently sacrificial, especially if you wanted to do it properly. She had other things she wanted to accomplish first.
But she felt the pressure mounting, and she resented having to feel it at work as well as at home, from her mother. She hadn’t explicitly told her parents that she wanted a career over marriage, though she suspected her dad already knew.
“All right,” Doris said then, and silence descended over the assembled women. She leaned forward, dark, short-cropped curls framing a striking, square-shaped face above a pearl necklace. “October issue. Whad’ya got, girls?”
The content for each issue was set about five months in advance of publication. The summer she had first started, Emily found it strange to be holed up in Doris’s sweltering office, fans humming like a swarm of bees as they discussed the Christmas copy for the December edition.
Today the conversation bounced around, as it always did, from writer to writer to Doris and back again like some wild tennis match as they hammered out their pitches. Maeve wanted to do a piece on the newly formed New Democratic Party, and Jan finished up with her proposal of the Christmas party-dress spread.
“Okay,” Doris told them all, nodding her satisfaction. “Run with all this, and get back to me. Now, moving on: Emily!”
Emily straightened, smoothed down her shoulder-length hair. It was a light, ashy brown, the color of a walnut.
“Here, Doris.”
“Did you get a chance to read the letters in response to the battered women piece in the February issue?” Doris asked, dark brows pinched, pen clutched tightly in her hand. “I’ve been eager to hear the responses.”
Emily sighed out the remainder of her leftover fury at those letters as all the eyes in the room turned to her. “Yes. It’s about what you’d expect.” She flipped a page on her clipboard and read aloud.
“I find it distasteful to read of such private matters in a ladies’ magazine. And,
It’s a husband’s prerogative to keep his wife in her place.” She looked up at Doris. “But far more in support, saying we all need to be talking more openly about woman abuse, and help those who are going through it. Everyone seems to know someone.”
Doris nodded. “Good. That issue has sold more than any other of the past two years, so that says something. Though
what exactly it says is worrisome.”
“Any word from upstairs?” Maeve asked, eyes narrowed.
Upstairs was the catch-all term for the room full of executive men in the Maclean-Hunter offices on the floors above. The ones with the brand-new teacups.
Doris scoffed. “Wanted to know why the surge in sales. I told them it must have been the cover story on how to use that new PAM cooking spray for all your Easter recipes.” A wry grin twisted at her mouth. Everyone laughed openly.
“They’ve really no clue,” Virginia said, shaking her head.
“It would seem not.”
“How many of these do you think we can slide through before they catch on?” Maeve asked.
Copyright © 2026 by Heather Marshall. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
