Aran Islands, 1898. Rose O'Neill learns that her beloved brother Donal has died fighting in the Spanish-American war. The news is followed by Donal's comrade-in-arms, Adam Blakely, who arrives a month later on Kilronan's scenic shores. He's come to return Rose's letters. Letters that Adam has re-read a hundred times. Two weeks stretch into two glorious months, then Adam's father falls ill, and he's summoned home to New York. He leaves Rose with the memory of a beautiful night and the promise of marriage. Yet Rose's eighteenth birthday comes and goes, and she doesn't hear a word. Unable to ignore the child growing inside of her, she leaves the only home she's ever known, clutching Adam's address. But in New York's crowded harbor, she's met with a cruel awakening. Penniless, pregnant, and alone in a foreign city, Rose must ford through sweatshops, Lower East Side tenements, and personal tragedy, before she can let go of her first love and hope for a second chance with a good, steady man. Then, just as Rose makes peace with her past, changes nobody could have foreseen threaten to topple the life for which she has sacrificed so much.