An enthralling historical romance played out between North Devon's wild coast and moors and the mountains and river-crossed plain of Alsace.The beautiful, red-haired Sarah Durrant is an uneducated servant who takes the place of her mistress when she suddenly dies at Lynmouth, as they are travelling to Ilfracombe across the remote wilderness of 18th century Exmoor. Her own origins are a mystery. She only knows she is illegitimate and possesses a gold locket which contains a miniature of a woman who resembles her. North Devon at first proves a sanctuary from the violence of her past, but then the French aristocrat, Jean Luc de Delacroix, arrives from the New World en route to Alsace, and her life becomes a tangle of love, deception and fear. Jean Luc de Delacroix is a soldier and a scientist. He is a devout Catholic and one of the central themes of the novel is that of discrimination against Catholicism in 18th century England.