Grace Merritt, a housewife and mathematical genius eager to escape her abusive marriage, finds work as a computer programmer at Digital Equipment Corporation. There, Grace is expected to fall in line and bow to her less intelligent male colleagues. Instead, she finds allies in her female co-workers Betty and Alice, each of whom are struggling in their own way. Betty, the head of the department’s assistant, is a white-passing black woman who is the sole provider for her family. And Alice is a young woman discovering her sexuality while under the thumb of her hyper-religious family. Together, these three women make strides in the world of computing while dealing with being women in a man’s world.