Jeanne Corbin typifies the female militants of the first generation of Canadian Communists. Andrée Lévesque's powerful account of the experiences of Corbin and her female comrades reveals the essential role women played in the movement. Lévesque also shows that, despite some efforts to construct egalitarian gender relations, these women subordinated gender issues to the class struggle.

Corbin's "red itinerary" began when she joined the Young Communist League in Edmonton. She later held party posts across the country through her involvement with The Worker in Toronto, a French communist paper in Montreal, the Workers' Cooperative in Timmins, and a lumbermen's strike in Abitibi - where she was jailed for taking part in a protest. She died of tuberculosis in London, Ontario, in 1944.

Lévesque relies on a wide range of sources, from the archives of the Third International and the Communist press to private correspondence and interviews, to provide a unique exploration of Canadian labour and social history as seen from the Left