At the beginning of her journey, 17-yr old Emma Ashton could not have dreamed of the changes the next seven years would have on her life.

Her mother had died when Emma was twelve, from the same Smallpox that had left Emma's face and perhaps her spirit, permanently scarred.

When her father commits suicide, leaving her penniless, Emma decides to strike out on her own in the brawling, upside-down society of post-Revolutionary War America.

Seemingly by chance, a position is found for her with crotchety old Silence Southwick of Boston - a moneylender, the owner of a thriving pottery and the survivor of two husbands, the second being a Sea Captain whose death is still a not-so-hushed-up mystery.

Emma's growing intimacy with this household of secrets and intrigues soon embroils her in a web of murder and suspected witchcraft, in which she discovers in a moment of terror, that she had unwittingly become the next victim...

But Emma comes through it all, unscarred at last, with the help of a rejected suitor from her past whom she learns to see with new eyes and a portrait in which she sees herself for the first time, as a strong and beautiful woman.