In 1899, a fifteen-year-old orphan named Hannah obtains employment as a servant in the home of one of Boston's wealthiest families, where she meets a noted portrait painter who seems to know things about her that even she is not aware of, and when she accompanies the family to their summer home in Maine, she feels an undeniable pull to the sea.

When seventeen-year-old Lucy's father, a minister, gets a prestigious summer position in Bar Harbor, Maine, her mother determines to find a rich husband for her daughter but Lucy is fascinated by the sea and a handsome ship-builder.