On a cold, lonely Christmas Eve, 15-year-old Dovie Ellis gives birth to a baby girl she names Christmas. Lost and afraid in the world, Dovie flees, abandoning her child that very same night.

Raised by kindly great-grandparents, Chrissie spends her childhood frolicking in the countryside, blind to their relative poverty and falling in love with sweet, handsome Jonah Costigan. But when her great-grandparents die, everything goes wrong. Chrissie finds herself shipped off to London to work in a cotton mill, and from there, it's not long before she is cast out on the frozen streets at Christmastime.

Chrissie must fight to survive the brutal reality of a London Christmas on the streets. She searches for her mother and yearns for Jonah, but with every Christmas that passes, hope seems to grow more and more distant. Until one Christmas, everything changes...