The basic plot centres around Dr Simon Jordan, an enthusiastic young American doctor with an absorbing interest in the treatment of the mentally ill. He is intrigued by the story of convicted young murderess Grace Marks, incarcerated for life in Kingston Penitentiary, near Toronto, for her part in the murders of her former employer and his housekeeper. Grace, who was just 15 at the time, claims to have no memory of the murders, and has since suffered bouts of hysterical �insanity� than have seen her placed in an asylum for a brief period. Due to Grace�s youth and good looks, she has several admirers who are convinced of her innocence and are campaigning to get her released, but the evidence against her is damning. Reverend Verringer, who lives locally to the Penitentiary, and is the ringleader of the campaign to free Grace, hears of Simon�s reputation and interest in the case and requests him to come to Kingston to make a study of her. He, and the other members of his Committee, are convinced that Simon will be able to use his psychological methods to draw out Grace�s hidden memories and thus prove her innocence. Simon eagerly takes on the challenge, but it proves to be far less straightforward than he initially anticipated.





The story is told in chapters that alternate between Grace�s first person narration of her life; from her impoverished upbringing in a rural Irish village to the family�s emigration to Canada, and then on to her various jobs as a servant in well to do homes in the Toronto area; third person narration of Simon�s life and experiences; and also letters written to and from various characters in the story. It is an intriguing narrative, jumping from the lively, youthful and fascinating voice of Grace, whose life, despite its ordinariness, is so evocatively told that it cannot help but interest, to the more staid and conflicted voice of Simon, who finds himself confused, harried and trapped in a foreign town, unsure of his abilities, depressed about his circumstances, and hopelessly mixed up in various unsuitable love affairs. While being swept up in the lives of the characters and their experiences of a 19th century, newly built Canada, the reader must also contend with trying to work out whether Grace is as trustworthy as she appears, and what the motives of those trying to prove her innocence are.





Young, pretty, polite, adept at needlework; Grace is not the monster the press made her out to be at her trial. However, there is no smoke without fire, and Simon�s correspondence with other doctors who have treated her show a cunning, devious and untrustworthy character that Simon cannot reconcile with the gentle Grace he has found himself falling in love with. Are Grace�s memories being wilfully hidden? Is she a wicked, jealous woman, moved to murder in order to get her own back on a woman she hated, or is she an innocent victim of an amorous fellow servant, whose own murderous desires could have resulted in her own death had she not appeared to side with him? Is her innocence suspected due to her good behaviour, or merely because her supporters are unable to stomach the idea that a pretty young girl could harbour murderous instincts? With the only other witnesses dead, Grace�s freedom depends on the impression she can give to the learned men sent to help her, and so can anything she says be taken as truth?