Abandoned at birth by her Chilean aristocrat father, Emilia comes of age in nineteenth-century San Francisco as an independent and fiercely ambitious young woman, decades ahead of her time. She will do whatever it takes to pursue her life’s passion for writing, even if it means pubishing under a man’s name.

Landing a position as a journalist for the Daily Examiner, Emilia soon sets sale for Chile,where she’s tasked with covering a brewing civil war. But the assignment offers Emilia more than a chance to prove herself as a writer, and before long she embarks on a  treacherous, life-changing journey though a homeland she never knew, to uncover the truth about her father – and herself.