Haven was colonized by humans who fled from Earth centuries earlier to avoid a conflict. They built an advanced, thriving civilization on Haven and began construction of modern cities around the planet. Life was good and a far departure from the former lives they lived on Earth. However, ninety years after the planet was colonized, an extremely aggressive civilization known as the Vrang attacked the planet destroying all the cities and carrying off ninety percent of the population enslaving them. All that remained of the once beautiful cities were blackened ruins towering above what was once an advanced civilization.

The survivors of the attack decided to stay out of the former cities; that would be the first place the Vrang would search if they ever returned. For the next two hundred years, humanity has lived a primitive farming existence. That’s how things remained until one night a large group of aliens were discovered sitting in their fields.

Isabelle Rackham knows she will not marry for love. Though arranged marriages have fallen out of fashion, hers has been settled for some time to combine the upper-middle-class wealth of her father’s coal mines with Alexander Osgood’s prospering Northern country textile mills. Though not a man prone to romantic gestures, Alexander is well-known as an eligible bachelor. His good looks have turned more than one head, so Isabelle is content to think of herself as Alexander’s wife.

However, her marriage is not what she expected. Northern England is nothing like her home farther west in the lake country. Cold, dreary, and dark, the soot from the textile mills creates a gray hue that seems to cling to everything in the city of Manchester. Alexander is distant and aloof, preferring to spend his time at the mill rather than with her at home. Their few conversations are brief, polite, and lacking any emotion, leaving Isabelle lonely and desperately homesick.