Lib Wright, a young English nurse trained by the legendary Florence Nightingale, arrives in an impoverished Irish village with a strange mission. Eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell is said to have eaten nothing for four months. With tourists thronging to see the child, and the press sowing doubt, the baffled community looks to an outsider to bring the truth to light. Lib's job is simple: to stay in the girl's bare room at all hours, watching her. An educated skeptic repelled by what she sees as ignorance and superstition, Lib expects to expose the fast as a hoax within days. But the long hours she spends with Anna begin to erode all her assumptions about the child, the Irish, and herself. Is Anna a fraud or a "living wonder"? Or is something more sinister un-folding right before Lib's eyes?