Yes the book is describing her life as Kohemeini was running things and then when he died. It really was a nightmare for the people there. Women lost all their rights and if you were an independent professional woman...life became horrendous. The author had lived and schooled in the United States. She knew that what was being said about the west was hooie, but to say so would have meant certain death. Life was so precarious. It was amazing that the book club existed at all.