Harriet, recently returned to an English village after a life spent with her widowed clergyman father in cities across Europe, where he has served in British embassies, quickly becomes involved in local life. She makes friends, including a scatty girl who is under her mother's thumb, attends all the classiest social events and attracts many admirers. Life for her seems to have settled down, but then a local feud involving her father, the village church where he is the vicar, and several parishioners leads the two to return to Europe and more official postings for her father and friendship and romance for Harriet. Then a traumatic event changes her life dramatically.
Celia Andrews has based the novel on Plan of a Novel, a publication of notes left by Jane Austen by Oxford University Press in their book Minor Works.