New Orleans, 1872. Rowan, an eighteen-year-old leprosy sufferer, has lived in a leper colony on the outskirts of town her entire life. Leprosy lesions cover her body, but they have not yet spread to her face. Rowan knows that if she wants to be accepted by the outside world, she must leave the colony before the lesions spread further – so she sews a long dress to cover her lesions, and escapes the colony to forge her own path in New Orleans and find a cure for her disease.