Dr. Emmaline Cartwright is about to retire as a professor of history from an Eastern Ontario University. Though she's led a successful career, she lingers in regret with an unfulfilled dream she's held for herself for many years. Her sense of restlessness feels like an inner wound.
Emmaline's yearnings are unexpectedly fulfilled when she discovers pages of a book written by Kate Robinson, a Loyalist woman from the eighteenth century. Within these pages, Kate tells of leaving America after the revolution to travel to a country that would eventually become Canada. Her love of both writing and her children sustains her when a betrayal causes her to journey back to the land she'd left behind.
Kate's story becomes Emmaline's obsession-and ultimately, her way forward. Each woman forges her own respective path, facing barriers and misfortunes. Though Emmaline and Kate occupy different eras, their stories are colored by similar hopes, fears, dreams, and tenacity.