In 1887, when her missionary parents have gone to China without her, snobbish twelve-year-old Julia is sent to a farm in upstate New York where she breaks a leg, while it mends learns to love and accept her country cousins and heal her anger.

In 1889, when Amelia van den Broek leaves her brother's strict home for the freedom of a social season with cousins in Baltimore, she is surprised by her strong attraction to an unsuitable man, but more so by the dark visions she has each evening which have some believing that she is the cause, not merely the seer, of harm.