London, 1835. Nineteen-year-old Kate Hogarth falls in love with the ambitious young journalist Charles Dickens, but as his fame grows and their family rises through Victorian society, she begins to see the darker side of the man she married. Meanwhile, orphan Anne Brown escapes poverty when a chance encounter brings her into the Dickens household, where she becomes caught between her loyalty to Kate and her dependence on Charles. A moving and richly imagined novel about love, ambition, and power, it gives voice to the overlooked woman behind one of history's greatest writers.