It's 1902. Emily Ramsden is 16 years old and blissfully in love with John Hanley, two years her senior. She knows her feelings for him go far beyond teenage infatuation. It's love, pure, strong and glorious. John shares her passion with all his heart and they're planning a life together. But then John is violently driven from her, leaving her to struggle beneath the thumb of a brutal, domineering father and at the mercy of a man with dark ambitions. Yet, through years of heartbreak and pain, through the crushing trials of a life left in tatters, the memory of a promise will never fade from her mind. And when all hope seems withered and dead, one word reignites a long, smouldering ember, sending a determined woman off on a remarkable search for a once-in-a lifetime love, lost but never forgotten.