It is 1845 and Hannah Gardner Price has lived all twenty-four years of her life according to the principles of the insular and rigid Nantucket Quaker community in which she was raised, where simplicity and restraint are valued above all, and a woman's path is expected to lead to marriage and motherhood. But up on her rooftop each night, Hannah pursues a very different and elusive goal: discovering a comet and thereby winning a gold medal awarded by the King of Denmark, something unheard of for a woman.