History graduate student Emma Broughton is struggling with her dissertation. Her advisor soon opens up a whole new avenue of research: time travel. After overcoming the initial shock of that reality, she travels to the UK to spend a year training and studying in the ITTA lab at the University of East Anglia. For a year she gets to know the ins and outs of studying the past in the past. Then, finally, she is ready for her Transfer.

In the 12th century, Emma finds that there was nothing she could have done to prepare her for this experience. With the help of her mentor, Dr. Richard Koenig, she learns about living and surviving in Norman England. The cast of characters she meets along the way guide her to discover that the beauty of human nature is universal through time and space. But so too is its ugliness.