Publisher's Synopsis
In the spring of 1725, father and daughter John and Emilie Selden begin their most daring alchemical adventure - an attempt to breathe life into dead matter - but their work is interrupted by the arrival of two strangers. One is a researcher into the life of plants, the other a dazzling young merchant. During the course of a sultry August, while her father is away, Emilie is caught up in the passion of first love. Her father's spell broken, she is banished to London, where she discovers that for all her extraordinary education she has no insight into the workings of the human heart...
