In a novel based on Chinese Cinderella tales, fourteen-year-old stepchild Xing-Xing endures a life of neglect and servitude, as her stepmother cruelly mutilates her own child's feet so that she alone might marry well.

When a marauding slave ship captures her sister, Melkorka, eight-year-old Brigid is lost at sea but survives, disguised as a boy, and sets out to rescue Melkorka, and as the years pass she becomes a woman, reputed to be fierce enough to conquer a man, but desirous only of reuniting with her family.