The heroine of the novel is a young, beautiful, intelligent girl, the daughter of an educated but degraded man, having lost her father, she is left completely alone, without a livelihood. Unable to bear the humiliation in the house where she had to serve as a servant, deceived by her lover, she decides to flee to London, but she is arrested and accused of theft. And so she, in a crowd of exiles, sails to New South Wales, where she will spend seven long years. And then suddenly she has the opportunity to escape from the nightmare in which she found herself and start a new life...