Eighteen-year-old Carrie Welton is restless, unhappy, and ill-suited to the conventions of nineteenth-century New England. When she is presented with an opportunity to escape is a socially approved manner, she leaps at the chance. Leaving behind personal horrors and the restraints of "good society", she moves to New York, where a group of young artists are beginning to transform that city and make a name for themselves. As she struggles to find her own talent and identity, Carrie wanders from adventure to misadventure. Her travels put her in the path of Bohemian painters, poets, singers, social crusaders, opium eaters, Irish gangs, gamblers, and independent feminists who are redefining what being a woman can mean.
Carrie's demons, however, continue to haunt her, even as she discovers her true calling. In the end, freedom, guilt, forgiveness and death are inextricably bound. But Carrie, being Carrie, sends an astonishing letter from the grave and thus engineers her final escape--forever into your heart.