In 1893 a time-travelling Jean-Luc Picard encountered a long-lived alien being named Guinan, posing as a human in order to study the customs and people of Earth.

In the course of this first encounter, Picard saved Guinan's life, a favour she never forgot...

Five centuries later, Captain Picard, now commander of the Starship Enterprise, brought Guinan aboard his ship. The hope was that her wisdom and inner peace would provide a moral grounding for the crew as they experienced the dangers of space. Because he had not yet made his trip through time, Picard had no knowledge of their nineteenth-century encounter. But he did remember a different meeting - a tumultuous adventure in which he and Guinan would risk their lives in a maze of interplanetary intrigue, with the future of the universe at stake. This is the story of that fateful meeting, and of a Guinan very different from the woman we think we know - a Guinan wracked by pain and longing, shaken to the roots of her soul.