North Carolina, 1793. When nine-year-old Tab catches yellow fever, her father John steals her onto a boat, hoping the sea air will cure his only child. For comfort, he tells Tab stories about her mother Helen, who died in childbirth.

Two decades earlier, Helen is given a slave girl for her tenth birthday. Moll’s arrival is meant to teach Helen discipline but soon the girls are close confidantes, until the arrival of John, a pirate turned soldier. And as the town is threatened in the dying embers of the Revolution, Helen must decide between a life of security on the family plantation and a sea adventure with the man she loves.