Adelaide Hunter Hoodless, lifelong crusader for the recognition of the domestic sciences (cooking, sewing, childcare and housework) and an early proponent of home economics in Canada, was considered one of the radical new woman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She helped turn the Canadian YWCA into a national organization. She founded the Women's Institute, assisted in the founding of the Victorian Order of Nurses and represented Canada on numerous International Councils of Women, as well as establishing the first school for the training of domestic science teachers in Canada and putting together the first Canadian domestic science textbook, popularly known as the Little Red Book.

Cheryl MacDonald documents Addie Hoodless's life with care and compassion from her girlhood on a farm near Brantford, Ontario, and marriage to a prominent businessman to her triumphs as a lobbyist in the 1890s and fading influence over the domestic science crusade in later years.