Three years after being kidnapped from her home in Martha's Vineyard, fourteen-year-old Mary Lambert receives a letter from Nora O'Neal, a servant in the house where she was held, who tells her of an eight-year-old girl where she is now employed whom Nora believes to be a deaf-mute, but who is being treated as insane. Nora asks Mary to come and teach the nameless child. A little scared, but intrigued, and bored with domestic life, Mary agrees--only to find that there is more to the child's story than Mary knew, and that freeing her from a world of silence and imprisonment may be more dangerous than anyone anticipated.