Arriving in the village of Rye, England, in 1914, Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good family, becomes the first female teacher of Latin at the local school and falls in love with her sponsor's nephew.
East Sussex, 1914. Hugh Grange is down from his medical studies, visiting relatives. His Aunt Agatha has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing, but the perfect summer is about to end as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war in the Balkans.