After World War I, San Francisco is a wild town. Abandoned by her lover, Violetta is swept up in the new, freer ways and becomes America's first embedded journalist. She finds work in a brothel that caters to San Francisco's most powerful men, to write her epic story on the conditions of working women. But federal agents looking to clamp down on both vice and workers' rights don't take kindly to her modern views. Shorter dresses, fair pay for women, and the dark and frightening world of sex and politics give Violetta a learning experience of a lifetime.