When Death comes to claim Nella May Carter, she catches His interest with her capacity to find beauty and love even amidst the hell of slavery. So Death - bored, disgusted by humanity, and believing the Earth would be greatly improved should humans no longer exist - lures Nella into a Faustian bargain: the chance at immortal life if she proves that Death is mistaken.

The price: Nella must entertain his fascination and challenge his beliefs until he is satisfied... or surrender herself - and the entire human race - to him forever.

Nella's solution is to never stop travelling and writing, documenting the beauty in every place and person she encounters - from writing in Victorian ladies' tattlers and reporting in Gilded Age New York, to penning bestselling novels and memoirs under countless noms de plume. Nella experiences joy and loss, passion and pain; she finds love in its many forms with friends, partners, and lovers.

All the while, Death is watching - and waiting for her to surrender.

Nella is almost ready to concede to Death when she meets a handsome professor. Tired of deception, desperate for a real connection, Nella begins to tell him her story - centred on her greatest romances over the centuries. And, in the telling, it becomes clear that Nella's own story might be the greatest love story of them all.