The Fever Tree

In Victorian London, only-child Frances Irvine is used to a life of leisure and excess. Although her Irish roots mark her as "other," she is marginally accepted into society. However, when her father dies suddenly leaving her alone and penniless, Frances is forced to choose between becoming a live-in nurse for her aunt's children or moving halfway around the world to marry her cousin, Edwin Matthews, a man she hardly knows and does not particularly like. Unwilling to face a lifetime of subservience, she quickly boards a ship to South Africa, where she meets William Westbrook, whose daring attitude is a stark contrast to her fiancé's seriousness and makes Frances yearn for her freedom. Things are hardly as they first appear and Frances must quickly adapt to a new way of life in a strange land where the comforts she once enjoyed are a thing of the past. To survive, she must move beyond the spoiled child she once was and accept her new existence.