The setting is Whitby in the mid 1700s. Maggie Nightingale spends her evenings singing in her father's tavern, the Anchor Inn. The inn is a haunt for local ruffians, thieves, and smugglers, and Maggie overhears many a dark plan hatched over ale at night. She never imagined that such plans could threaten her very existence, and see her wrongly accused of murder. Togther with notorious smuggling villain, Thomas Hague, Maggie's only escape from public hanging comes in the form of a ship bound for America, The New World. But will the shadow of death follow Maggie Nightingale across the ocean, and haunt her for the rest of her life?