Lily Thorpe has big dreams: she wants to make her fortune as a dressmaker, away from her family's fish stall and the poor fishing community of Carreckwater - and she wants to marry Dick Rawlings, her secret sweetheart. But when tragedy strikes and Dick is killed in a boating accident caused by the wealthy and arrogant Clermont-Read family, Lily is forced to come to terms with life without him.

She soon finds, however, that her fate and that of the Clermont-Read family is intertwined, and, torn between a desire for revenge and her continuing wish to make a better life for herself, she makes a decision which she hopes will enable her to combine the two. Instead, heartache and misery follow and Lily must reassess her priorities - before it is too late.