She was a beautiful young innocent, driven into the sins of that womanhood by the dark desires that ruled men's hearts.You will never forget Lily -- as a child watching her mother die in want...as an orphan struggling to protect her reckless brother...as a teen-aged innocent discovering the power of desire...as a fear-filled young girl learning to sell her body in the most elegant brothel in the wickedest city on earth...as a captivating beauty whom men would pay any price to possess...as a mother desperately trying to keep the truth from her daughter...as a woman forced by love to return to the city of her shame and seek to conquer it..And you will never forget Lily's story -- as it moves from the Hell's Kitchen squalor and Fifth Avenue splendour of old New York..to the rolling decks of a great clipper ship...to the brawling streets, the fantastic pleasure palaces, the magnificent Nob Hill mansions of San Francisco, through storm and earthquake and fire in a breathless saga of love, intrigue and illicit passion....