This book focuses on the arrests, trials and defences of women charged under the Wartime Emergency Laws passed in the United States shortly after the country entered the war.
These women, often members of the political left, whose anti-war or pro-labour activity brought them to the attention of Federal officials, made up 10% of the roughly 2,000 Federal espionage cases.
Their trials became important arenas in which women's relationships and obligations in the emergency national security state were contested and defined.