Margaret Catchpole was born into a smugglers' world in Suffolk in the late 1700s. A spirited woman, she meets her match in Will Laud, 'hell-born babe' and wanderer, with an easy knack for evading the excise men. As the valued servant of a wealthy family and a friend of criminals, Margaret leads a double life that will inevitably bring about her downfall, and she is twice sentenced to hang - but she escapes the gallows and is transported with other convicts to Australia.