The English countryside is beautiful, but for Emma Corey it cannot compare with the bright lights of New York City. Tired of performing only in pubs and at church, she announces she's moving to America--and her conservative father disowns her on the spot.

Distraught but undeterred, Emma will become a Broadway star--or die trying. The largeness of the new city, her new friends, the boundless opportunities make everything shine with promise. However, New York has a way of chipping away at a newcomer's resolve. First a robbery. Then a low-wage job. Then the realization that such a city attracts the young and the talented--competitors all.

Just when it seems like Emma might have to admit defeat and return to the UK, she is introduced to a peculiar couple: a wife that cannot bear children of her own, and a husband who would pay Emma to solve that problem.

Emma's father once told her, "Money is life." But when Emma trades one for the other and moves into the couple's remote estate to participate in an elaborate ruse, there's no telling what kind of life she'll have once she's taken the money.