In the not-too-distant future, with the country in economic collapse, the dictator Gorston has risen to power by blaming the nation's woes on women for having taken men's jobs. In this new society, women have only two possible roles: they must either stay at home and bear children or else perform the menial jobs that men don't want. These workers are known as the 'Grey Ones,' women brainwashed into accepting their servile state and forced to dye their hair grey and wear grey clothes to make them as unattractive as possible. Now a small group of Grey Ones has finally decided to fight back and overthrow the oppressive regime, but Gorston's ruthless head of secret police is determined to root them out and crush them at any cost....

The only novel by Irish social activist Margaret O'Donnell, The Beehive (1980) is an important rediscovery, a dystopian thriller that shares common themes and plot elements with Margaret Atwood's more famous classic The Handmaid's Tale, which was published five years later. This first-ever American edition makes O'Donnell's scarce novel available to readers for the first time in over forty years.