Twenty-year-old Phoebe Dymond, a trained herbalist and midwife, boards the packet ship, Providence, bound for Jamaica and an arranged marriage. Incidents on board provoke clashes between Phoebe and the ship's surgeon, Jowan Crossley, but their professional antagonism turns to mutual respect and a deepening attraction neither dare acknowledge. Arriving in Kingston after a skirmish with a French privateer, they find the town in the grip of a slave revolt. Terrifying events on the plantation of which she will be mistress force Phoebe to relinquish all hope of the happiness she had glimpsed, but fate has one more trick to play...