The year is 1883, and in New York City, it’s a time of dizzying splendour, crushing poverty and tremendous change. With the gravity-defying Brooklyn Bridgennearly complete and the city in the grip of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, Dr Anna Savard and her cousin, Sophie - both graduates of the Women’s Medical School - treat the city’s most vulnerable. Even when doing so puts all they’ve worked for in jeopardy.
For Anna, her role as a surgeon has placed her in the path of four children who have lost everything. Faced with their helplessness, Anna must make the unexpected choice between holding on to the pain of her past and letting love into her life.
For Sophie, an obstetrician and the orphaned daughter of free people of colour, helping a desperate young mother forces her to grapple with her doctor’s oath - and thrusts her and Anna into Comstock’s orbit, a dangerous man who considers himself the enemy of everything indecent, and of anyone who dares to defy him.
