Bastard-born but cherished daughter of King John, Joanna becomes a political pawn when her adored father arranges her marriage to Llewelyn Prince of Gwynedd, Wales, his bitter foe. The young bride is a stranger in a hostile land, married to a man she does not know. Until she comes to love her brilliant husband, leader of men, and passionate opponent to the English laws that chain his homeland. And as bloody wars break out once more between England and Wales, Joanna is caught in the crossfire of fatal enmity, her loyalties cruelly divided between her father and the man she loves.

The battle-torn land could not be more ravaged than her troubled, turbulent heart, and in a moment of confused, guilty passion that she will never forget, Joanna risks her peace of mind, her freedom ... even her life.

This sweeping saga of true events in the thirteenth century, beginning Sharon Penman's magnificent trilogy of England and Wales, is a tangled, tempestuous story of power and passion, loyalty and lies ...