History graduate student Emma Broughton is struggling with her dissertation. Her advisor soon opens up a whole new avenue of research: time travel with The International Time Travel Association. 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, becoming close to her fellow lab mates. Then, finally, she is ready for her Transfer.

In the 12th century, Emma finds that there was nothing she could have done to prepare for this experience. With the help of her mentor, Dr. Richard Koenig, she learns about living and surviving in Norman England. Over time, Emma begins to see how the theoretical ethics touted by the ITTA are not suitable for the reality faced by those in the past. Her transgressions begin small but her desire to help others grows into a complexity of lies, putting her academic career at risk. She wants to follow her own set of ethics, but how far is too far?