Lily is grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires, while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife in 2016. Vivian Barr is dedicated to helping her husband find success in Watergate-era Washington, D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life --- along with the lives of others. Esther and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls in ancient Persia. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the King, in the hopes that she will save them all. In THE BOOK OF V., these characters' stories overlap and ultimately collide, illuminating how women’s lives have and have not changed over thousands of years.