On a rainsoaked, windswept, pre-Christmas night in St. John's, Newfoundland, prim and proper teacher Jacqueline O'Rielly is hit by a sudden, reckless urge to go bar-hopping. What she finds in a dingy, harbourfront pub where a foreign shipwrecked shrimp fisherman is sojourning will forever alter the course of the rest of her life. Aleksandr Bovka (Sasha) is married, can hardly speak a word of English, and only in port long enough for his battered ship to be seaworthy again.

What follows is the collision catalyst for tragic, impossible chemistry as these two unlikely lovers from opposite ends of the world find that one can't live without the other. Then, the unthinkable happens. Jackie gets a goodbye letter, with no return address.

Eight bitter years pass, where one doesn't know anything of the other. Until a work trip to Europe, where amazingly she is confronted by the fly-by-night sailor who broke her heart so long ago, and who is torched into the very depths of her unforgiving soul. A searing saga of the elemental twists of fate, that leave even the most cynical believing in the power of eternal love.