Nine-year-old Flora didn’t ask to be born into a life of hardship and suffering. A lady of the night, her mother had neither the time nor the inclination to raise a child, and the fact that Flora has survived this long is nothing short of a miracle. When her mother sells her to the owner of the Great Hotel as a scullery maid, Flora learns the value of her life: eight shillings.

Life in the Great Hotel is unspeakable. For years, Flora works constantly, half starved and constantly driven by the cruel cook and malicious hotel owner. When some of the older girls find another way to make extra money, Flora is having none of it – yet somehow she always bears the brunt of the other girls’ bad decisions.

Things go from bad to worse. Poverty threatens to swallow Flora whole. She would lose hope entirely, were it not for the sweet, gentle boy who visits the Great Hotel from time to time. Ethan Goddard is the only person in the entire world who has ever been kind to Flora, and as she grows older, Flora grows to realize she loves him. But when circumstances rip him from her life and plunge Flora into chaos and loneliness, she is going to have to decide what she will do for that love. And if she will allow it to take her on a journey like no other....