It was a perilous plight in 19th-century America to be a desirable young woman, alone and impoverished, with a stain on her past that had to be kept secret. And for that same young woman to seek entry to a world of medicine barred to her sex bordered on the impossible.

Damaris Fanshawe was that woman, making the ultimate personal sacrifice to become a doctor, only to have it all threatened by two men-ruthless New York financier Templeton Caylew, who could ruin her unless she yielded to his shocking proposal...and Caylew's son-in-law, handsome, gallant, Southern planter Guy Parrish, who offered a love that would break her heart to refuse, and destroy her career to accept...