As she worked hard to climb her way out of poverty as a single parent, scrubbing the toilets of the wealthy, navigating domestic labour jobs as a cleaner whilst also juggling higher education, assisted housing, and a tangled web of government assistance, Stephanie wrote. She wrote the true stories that weren t being told. The stories of the overworked and underpaid.

Written in honest, heart-rending prose and with great insight, Maid explores the underbelly of the upper-middle classes and the reality of what it s like to be in service to them. I d become a nameless ghost, Stephanie writes. With this book, she gives voice to the servant worker, those who fight daily to scramble and scrape by for their own lives and the lives of their children.