Isabella's family is noble but half-ruined, so her intended marriage with a dignitary of the kingdom appears as a godsend for all its members. But Isabella finds herself accused of infanticide after killing the baby she was carrying in secret and it is as if the whole sky fell in on the family. That just cannot be. The young woman's parents and perfidious Isabella herself are prepared to do anything to avoid scandal. And they do: they lure Consuelo, Isabella's cousin, into a trap so that it is she who takes the blame for the baby's death. Condemned to ten years of forced labor in a penal colony, Consuelo is embarked, amid over a hundred female convicts, on a special ship. A long, painful and eventful voyage begins.—Guy Bellinger