This volume II of Lock Forty, further portraying John's struggle to develop his canalling business, while raising his young family with Mary, he is also forced to deal with his immediate past and the relationship with Jessie that so seamlessly overlapped with his sudden marriage with Mary. Therefore, he is compelled to seek redemption with his current wife, for whom this unexpected conflict feels like the ultimate betrayal by her husband, whose previous flings with other women in his past, for Mary, became an ultimate test of her redeeming, personal attributes.