Endsleigh House stands, crumbling and gracious, on the south-west coast of England, it's rooms shut up and abandoned. But what secrets do they hold?
 

Cate, a gifted young artist, arrives in London from New York, determined to remake her life and escape her recent past. Working for her aunt's auction house, she's sent down to Devon to value the contents of Endsleigh, the grand Georgian home of a former socialite between the wars. Inside, its once elegant interiors are now worn with age and dust. There Cate discovers, hidden in the back of one of the bookshelves, an old shoebox containing an exquisite pair of silk dancing shoes from the 1930s, along with a mysterious collection of objects—a diamond brooch, a photograph of a handsome young sailor, a dance card, and a beautiful pearl and emerald bracelet from Tiffanys.  
 

Unable to resolve the questions in her own life, Cate quickly becomes immersed in solving the mystery of the shoe box and begins to unravel the story of Baby Blythe. Bright, beautiful and reckless, Baby was the most famous debutante of her generation—and also the most dangerous. The clues in the box reveal a tale of destructive, addictive love, a tale that will lead Cate to face some dark truths of her own.