Violet is forced to become a courtesan in Shanghai, and excels in the business of seduction and illusion, yet struggles to understand herself. Fifteen years earlier, her sixteen-year-old mother Lucia fell for a Chinese painter and followed him to Shanghai. She is eventually left alone in a foreign land. Both women, betrayed, refuse to submit to fate and societal expectations. They fight to recover what was taken from them: Respect; a secure future; and most poignantly, love.