Summaries

Synopsis

During the California Gold Rush, a beautiful young woman called Angel (Abigail Cowen) works as a prostitute in the fictional town of Pair-a-Dice in 1850. Despite being the object of desire for the local men, she survives through hatred and self-loathing. Angel is so popular that men would agree to wait for days to have sex with her. The madame Duchess holds a lottery to decide who gets to sleep with her.Meanwhile, a visiting farmer named Michael Hosea (Tom Lewis) prays for God to send him a wife. Later that day, he sees Angel walking through town and falls in love at first sight.

Flashbacks reveal that Angel's real name is Sarah and that she knows only abuse from men. As a child, she overhears her father, Alex Stafford (Josh Taylor), saying that she should never have been born. Sarah learns that her father is married and her mother, Mae (Nina Dobrev), is his mistress.

Alex eventually cuts off support for Mae, obliging her to become a prostitute and eventually become sick and die. Distraught, Sarah rejects her mother's Catholic faith. Afterward, Mae's pimp sells an 8-year-old Sarah to a man named Duke (Eric Dane), who renames her "Angel" and forces her into prostitution.One night, when Angel is a teenager, one of her customers is her father, and she knowingly has sex with him to punish him for how he treated her mother. He does not recognize her, but when he finds out the next morning, he commits suicide.

This prompts Angel to escape from Duke, with the help of fellow prostitute Sally (Tanya Van Graan). Duke kills Sally, but Angel manages to escape. She teams up with 2 women on the ship to run a prostitution business but is robbed as soon as they land. Angel arrives in California with hopes of beginning a new life but, penniless, once again becomes a prostitute at a brothel there.

In the present day, when Michael enters Angel's room and tells her he wants to marry her, she is thrown off-guard but remains aloof toward him. Michael refuses to give up and meets Angel multiple times. Angel asks Duchess for her savings in Gold as she wants out of the business. Angel claims that the Duchess works the girls too hard to provide a comfortable life for herself. Duchess is livid with Angel and says that her account is in debt with the brothel. It is not until after Angel is nearly beaten to death by a brothel guard Macgowan, that she agrees to marry Michael and leaves with him. Michael pays the Duchess to square Angel's debt.

Michael nurses her back to health at his home, despite her continued aloofness toward him. Michael continues to surprise her as he claims to love her as his wife and refuses to have sex with her. Afraid to trust him, she runs away at her first opportunity, but Michael finds her and convinces her to come home.

As the two begin their life on the farm, Angel develops feelings for Michael but runs away again when she realizes that he wants children, as she believes herself to be sterile (Duke performed a surgery on her when she first got pregnant. The doctor said that he would make sure that Angel would never get pregnant again).Michael's brother Paul also returns home after several years of Gold prospecting. Paul instantly recognizes Angel as a prostitute. Paul tells Michael that Angel has been with thousands of men and is only using him.She gets a ride with Michael's brother-in-law, Paul (Logan Marshall-Green), who was riding into town to get some supplies for the farm with Michael's horse, wagon and money.Paul resents her because of her past and demands that she pay him for the ride by having sex with him. Angel has no option but to agree to his demand and gives Paul a blow job.

Back in Pair A Dice, Angel reluctantly returns to the brothel to get the gold she is owed, from Duchess (Famke Janssen). She finds that the brothel had been burned down by Macgowan (Brandon Auret) with the Duchess, Lucky (Jamie-Lee O'Donnell) and Mei Ling (Wu Kexi) inside.

With no money and no place to live, she reluctantly goes back to prostitution with one of the town's bar owners. When Michael arrives to rescue her from her employers, she is relieved to return home with him. Michael knew what Paul had done to Angel and yet he loved her. He forgives her, and their relationship begins to blossom based on honesty and affection.

Michael helps a migrant Altman family to relocate next to his farm and gives them shelter while Altman's wife delivers his baby. Angel sees how happy Michael is with a baby. The Altman have an elder daughter named Miriam.As Angel falls in love with Michael, she becomes convinced that he will be happier married to someone else who can have children, leading her to leave him once more. Angel leaves a letter to Miriam asking her to keep Michael happy.Having learned to cook while with Michael, she is able to get a job at a cafe in the city of San Francisco rather than returning to prostitution.

However, by chance, she encounters Duke, who has relocated to California. He compels her to return to prostitution by threatening the life of her employer after burning down the cafe. He places her on a stage in his new establishment for his patrons to view. Angel sees that Duke was still trafficking in little girls.There, in a moment of desperation, she regains the faith she lost after her mother's death and tells the audience about Duke's sexual trafficking of young girls. Duke denies the allegations and attempts to murder Angel, but an African American man, implied to be an old friend of Michael's, subdues him and the captive girls escape into the audience, resulting in Duke being lynched by an outraged mob. Afterward, Angel starts a successful mission to help rehabilitate other young prostitutes.

Three years later, Paul finally comes to find her and tells her that Michael still loves her. Angel tells Paul that she is sterile and hence left Michael hoping that he would marry Miriam. But Paul says that Miriam married him and not Michael.Angel returns home to Michael, offering her love and telling him that her real name is Sarah. They reunite and are shown to eventually have children.