In February 1863, fifteen-year-old Grace Thorne finds herself orphaned and penniless at a small cabin in the unfamiliar hills of northwest Cincinnati. To avoid starvation, she steals food from farmhouses near Cheviot. Always and only under ample moonlight, she enters the homes without a sound and exits as quietly as she came. Soon favoring valuables to food, Grace pawns her prizes in downtown Cincinnati and uses the money to live in quiet solitude at the cabin. When a careless mistake results in her discovery, she narrowly escapes arrest and disappears from Cheviot. As a child, Daniel Wagner is riveted by his father's telling of the local thief named Grace and never forgets. In fall 1884, twenty-three-year-old Daniel finds his young Cheviot farm on the verge of bankruptcy and grows desperate. With lifelong friends Samuel and Edward providing cover, Daniel lifts a gold chalice from the traveling Crown Jewels of England exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum and briefly imagines his troubles behind him. Soon after, he watches helplessly from his farmhouse bed as Grace takes it from him. When Grace arranges to sell the chalice on the black market, she's betrayed by the pawn shop owner who she's trusted for over twenty years and comes away empty-handed. Determined to recover the object at all costs, she turns to the only person who might prove willing and able to offer assistance: Daniel Wagner. Together, they become entangled with the chalice's powerful and mysterious buyer and separately race to leave the city before being captured and killed.