This book opens up a window on the life of a female labourer who lived and worked in a small ironworks village in central Finland. Her life touches upon many of the core aspects of 20th-century social change in Finland: increasing educational opportunities, social mobility, the emergence of new technologies and the transformation of gender roles. The research focuses on experiences related to gender, class and work, and on the changes occurring in these aspects of life.

The research material consists of life-narrative interviews charting a process during which the author of this study engaged in an intergenerational dialogue with an elderly woman born in 1927 who is also her grandmother. The research stands at the crossroads of ethnology, folklore studies as well as social, micro and oral history.