Born in India, the close-to-starving infant Susanna is snatched from the jaws of death by her grandmother, Claire MacLeod. Subsequent to her inauspicious birth, the baby girl suffers constant illness, cared for by her ever-vigilant grandmother. Preoccupied with her school in the Himalayas, Susanna's mother, Diana, is more than happy at first for her parents to take the sickly toddler with them to France. Upon her mother's return into her life, Susanna is sent to an English boarding school at the age of eight. Relentlessly bullied over her "frenchified" manners by staff and older girls alike, the child eventually suffers a nervous breakdown.
In desperation to escape her mother's suffocating dominance, eighteen-year-old Susanna plunges into marriage with an older man she scarcely knows and travels to India with him.
Seemingly born under a malevolent star, can Susanna ever find the happiness she desperately seeks? She is soon to discover whether or not she has what it takes to take charge of her life...