From her simple farm life in Vermont, Joanna bravely joins the growing number of girls working in the textile mills in 1836. With her she carries the painful memory of Jed, a young man who has left her, loving the sea more then he loves her. In the Lowell, Massachusetts, mill, Joanna is horrified to find the work both grueling and dangerous. Even a romance with the mill owner's roguish nephew, Theo, can't keep the daily work from becoming terrifying drudgery. To strike with the other mill women seems Joanna's only way out of a job that threatens her very existence. But defying the miller owner's will certainly mean losing her job and Theo. And if Jed ever returns from the sea, would he recognize -- could he love -- the new Joanna?