It's the story of a thirteen-year-old girl, Lilli, who is apprenticing with a healer and mid-wife until her father decides that they will move to the New World when the British put out a call for hard-working Protestants to help settle in Nova Scotia. Lilli attempts to change her father's mind about the move, by doing an incantation, but ends up putting her friend, the midwife, in danger. It is also the story about the belief in witchcraft that was prevalent in Europe at the time, a belief that was brought to Nova Scotia with some of the Foreign Protestants and actually remained in Lunenburg County for a very long time..
Secondary, to this main story, is a small story thread about another(present-day) girl, Lilly. A gift from a neighbour on her fifth birthday sparks memories inside her of this other life she lived in Wurtemburg, and is the story two soul-friends, separated in 1752, being finally reunited 200 years later.