Evangeline Knapp is the perfect, compulsive housekeeper, while her husband, Lester, is a poet and a dreamer. Suddenly, through a nearly fatal accident, their roles are reversed: Lester is confined to home in a wheelchair and his wife must work to support the family. The changes that take place between husband and wife and particularly between parents and children are both fascinating and poignant.

    Although it has been ignored for nearly a hundred years, it is an important, and extremely readable, book. Edith Zangwill (1874–1945) - her husband was the writer Israel Zangwill - bases the detailed descriptions of Ursula’s working life on the life of Edith Zangwill’s stepmother, Hertha Ayrton (1854–1923), a physicist who became an expert on the electric arc. Yet, as Elizabeth Day writes: ‘The Call gives a rare insight into a woman’s domestic life in the first two decades of the 20th century ... domestic details about running a house are, most unusually, given their due alongside Ursula’s political actions, elegantly making the point that a woman’s work behind closed doors is just as worthy of our attention as what goes on in the wider world.’ By making political points in the guise of a ‘woman’s novel’, the author stunningly reveals her commitment to feminism.’

    Jacobs pioneered health care reforms and access to birth control for prostitutes and saleswomen. A leader in the international women's suffrage and peace movements, she joined Carrie Chapman Catt on a year-long round-the-world lecture tour. Jacobs recounts her remarkable experiences in a voice that is often witty, sometimes angry, and always indomitable.