A tragic plane crash eight years earlier has left Catherine Elizabeth Darcy orphaned and in the custody of her overly protective brother, Bennet. Since then, her life at Pemberley Estate - the Darcy's ancestral home in Derbyshire, England - has been sheltered and lacking adventure of any kind. When 16-year-old Catie arrives home for her school holiday, she is expecting another long, boring summer of daydreaming and whiling away warm afternoons reading the romance novels her brother calls "rubbish." What she discovers, however, is a handsome yet insufferable Irishman named Sean Kelly, her summer riding instructor. Coupled with an intriguing and mysterious WWI-era diary, which she finds hidden in the window seat of her bedroom, Catie Darcy's summer soon proves to be anything but boring.