For forty years since the turn of the century, former schoolteacher Catherine Starr has lived in solitude behind the proverbial locked door of her house, that solitude due to she suffering from anthropophobia: a fear of people. That fear was a reaction to the shock of some news, that shock exacerbated by regret. Unexpectedly, it would be another shock the result of war that would bring her out of that fear and back into the living at this important time of citizens providing service to the country in that war effort.