Sarah Martin, fiercely independent daughter of a reform-minded mill owner has grown up in a household devoted to social progress and nothing makes her more proud or is more important to her than her dedication to changing the world, until she meets Lord John Claverton.

Sarah scorns the gentry as being superficial socially competitive and vapid, until she meets Lord John, rector of London’s most fashionable church son of one of England’s most powerful dukes. For the first time she finds someone who listens to her, appreciates her, argues with her, makes her face some uncomfortable truths, and inspires tantalizing and unsettling feelings.

Lord John’s own uncomfortable truth is that family loyalty keeps him imprisoned in his society-conscious parish, unable to minister to the poor and needy as he longs to do, until Sarah Martin awakens in him a new sense of purpose, and other feelings he never knew he possessed.