England, 1876. A young woman, alone in a hostile, uncaring Victorian city, uses her wits and cunning to survive on the streets. When a book she admires in a shop window is sold, she follows the new owner to a large town house and sneaks inside only to find a world very different from the one she is used to. Here there are books galore, food for the taking in the massive kitchen, rooms full of curios and a large roof garden to explore. In this colourful, imaginative story, told entirely in pictures, a young Eyra Toggenburg takes us along on a remarkable journey with her own unique observations of a by-gone time.