meeting Anne Devlin, an Irish rebel who had been imprisoned for three years in Dublin's notorious Kilmainham Gaol for her involvement in Robert Emmet's failed 1803 rebellion.

It's 1812 and young Percy Shelley, recently expelled from Oxford University, because of his professed atheism, decides to begin his political life by aiding the Irish in their effort to repeal the 1801 Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland, while trying to complete Emmet's rebellion.

In this alternate history, Percy and his wife Harriet, full of unrealistic and lofty goals, crash against the reality of an oppressed Ireland and proud patriots like Devlin, who have no reason to trust the British, no matter how often they profess to possess Irish hearts.