In the early 1970s, I was a Cape Cod housewife who delighted in all things domestic. My new life was everything I had been promised. But as I baked up a storm, crafted to my heart's content, became the hostest with the mostest, adored every move my two boys made, and partnered with my husband to rehab the respect I'd lost, I didn't know my ideal life was like a ship in a bottle. Or that it was about to crash into the rocks. Or that when I surfaced, I would be consumed by a mission to change an American institution most people considered sacred, including me.