Sydney 1945. The war is over and so are the jobs (and freedoms) of thousands of Australian women. War correspondent Tilly Galloway has hung up her uniform and been forced to work on the women’s pages of her newspaper – the only job available to her – where she struggles to write advice on fashion and make-up. As Sydney swells with returning servicemen and the city bustles back to post-war life, Tilly finds her world is anything but normal. As she desperately waits for word of her prisoner-of-war husband, she researches stories about the lives of the underpaid and overworked women around her. Those whose war service has been overlooked, the freedom and independence of their war lives lost to them. Meanwhile Tilly’s waterside worker father is on strike and her best friend Mary is struggling to cope with the stranger her own husband has become since being liberated from Changi a broken man. As strikes rip the country apart and the news from abroad causes despair, Tilly realises that for her the war may have ended, but the fight is just beginning ...