What becomes of a woman who strives to live by her own vital principle, to find and embrace her own ‘electrical’ impulse?

Young Chjara Vallé, full of irrepressible music and sensuality, is exiled from Corsica — sold as a servant to an opium addict in Paris. Music paves the way for her to flee with Henry, her love, to New England. There the new freedoms and Puritan vigor vie for ascendancy. What will the Americans make of this throat-singing, glass harmonica-playing exotic who lives to make a virtue of pleasure?