In the impoverished fishing community of 18th century Lyme Regis, young Millie seeks to better herself. The influence of her benefactors along with her own talents, bring her closer to a world she is drawn to. Her secret, brief but naive liaison with the squire's son has far reaching consequences. A dramatic family saga encompassing intrigue, seduction and wrongful imprisonment, takes the heroine through a fast moving series of events. Entwining fact and fiction and set against a background of smuggling, the tale unravels in a small community on the Dorset coast, in the second half of the eighteenth century.