He is a young Welshman who forsook the family shipbuilding business to study medicine . . . until, poised at the brink of a brilliant career, tragedy broke his heart and shattered his dreams. She is a daughter of London's inner city, a woman-child weaned on life's harsh realities who has learned much about fending for her living and her virtue but little of what it means to be loved. Thrown together by circumstance, Rees Kenyon and Callie Summers head across the ocean toward a new life during the stormy beginnings of the American Revolution. As a new nation struggles for independence, Rees employs his medical knowledge to save lives, and his shipbuilder's skills to build the potent fighting vessel known as the "spider catcher." But it is Callie, whom Rees scooped from the mud of the London streets, on whom his own life will soon depend . . . and who can help him find for himself the faith, hope, and love he has taught her.