It begins with a shocking act of violence. On a humid, thundery afternoon, Laura Blundy murders the man who saved her life. He is her husband, but she has a lover. Fifteen years her junior, already the father of five, Billy is a laborer-one of thousands of faceless men installing the sewers in the city of London in the mid-1800s. He is the only passion Laura has ever known, and so she pursues her obsessive dream of their life together to its dire extremes....