San Francisco, 1906. In a city booming with new money and possibility, two very different women seek an escape: Suling, a Chinatown embroideress, has only days to avoid an arranged marriage and Gemma, an opera singer, desperately needs to reignite her career. Together with Alice Eastwood, a fiercely independent botanist, the women step into the glittering orbit of Henry Thornton, a connoisseur and railroad magnate. It is a world in which Thornton pulls the strings -- and in which opportunity beckons, along with glimpses of rare objects of desire. At its very centre is Thornton's priceless antique, the Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing's fallen Summer Palace. But all that was promised is taken away when a devastating earthquake rips the city apart. Betrayal and danger are at every turn -- and, as secrets come tumbling out, it is impossible to know whom to trust. The five years later at a sumptuous ball in the palace of Versailles, the Phoenix Crown mysteriously reappears...