Sociologist Mary Blair-Loy examines how cultural models of 'devotion' - to work and to family - shape the lives of women financial executives, creating conflicts that have no satisfactory resolution within existing frameworks. Her research, based on extensive interviews with women who reached senior positions in finance, reveals how the expectation of total commitment to career clashes with equally powerful expectations of maternal devotion. Blair-Loy shows that women in her study experienced these as genuine devotions rather than mere role requirements - they felt called to both work and motherhood in ways that made compromise feel like betrayal. The book examines how different women navigated these competing devotions: some left high-powered careers for full-time motherhood, some remained childless to maintain career focus, some attempted various forms of balance that never fully satisfied either commitment. Blair-Loy's analysis reveals how cultural schemas that seem to offer guidance actually create impossible demands, and how institutions structured around male career patterns disadvantage women regardless of their individual choices. For anyone interested in work-family conflict, gender and organizations, or how culture shapes individual experience, this work provides rigorous sociological analysis grounded in compelling personal narratives.