An accomplished student and heiress to a great title, Genevieve has been brought up as a Proper Young Lady, carefully instructed in the Covenants. She must soon take up the time-honoured responsibilities of womanhood: that is to marry a nobleman of her father's choosing and bear a child at the age of thirty. But Genevieve remembers all the stories and the secret knowledge learned from her mother, now long dead, and she yearns to heed the call of the sea - though she has never even seen the vast waters that cover most of the surface of her home planet of Haven. And she begins to uncover bitter truths about the seemingly backward planet of Haven . . .