What really happened to the women and children during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans? This story follows Lily, one of those children.
It is 1831, and sixteen-year-old Lily, a gypsy, learns from Mirella her gypsy grandmother that her real parents are an Englishman and a Greek heiress. Shocked by the news, Lily questions her identity.
Her search for her parents begins not only a journey that physically transports her to England, but a coming-of-age journey of self-discovery. Finding out from cousins that her father is away in the Indies and her mother presumably dead from the war with the Ottomans, Lily is sent to a boarding school in York. There she abandons her gypsy way of life and learns how to dress, walk, and act like a lady.
Lily adjusts to life in England, and eventually returns to her familial home. The events that follow, stir up in her the dark, hidden past that she had buried all these years in her psyche. Flashbacks reveal the trauma she experienced as a child during the Greek war of independence against the Ottomans. She secretly falls in love with Edward, a handsome nobleman, but he is engaged to another. Haunted by her past, will Lily overcome her fears to face what awaits her?