Marine historian Mark Hannah finds a hauntingly beautiful figurehead in Newfoundland He traces her ship, The Lady Isabella, back to a small port in Cornwall where he meets Gabrielle Ellis, the woman who is going to restore her to her former glory When the two meet the attraction is immediate, but both are happily married and neither wants to break up their families Together they trace the jigsaw pieces of the lives of the carver Tom Welland and the real Lady Isabella But Gabrielle soon finds herself in a maze of moral dilemmas, questionning everything she thought she knew about herself