The events that led Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to write her horror masterpiece Frankenstein provide the basis of this haunting, romantic drama. The story opens aboard a beat up schooner as it carefully makes its way through a massive broken ice pack near the North Pole. There Shelley writes her fantastic tale and reminisces about the events of the previous summer when she was courted by the poetic Percy Byshe Shelley. They elope and go to Switzerland where they become friends with dashing Lord Byron and his companion Dr. Polidori. Shelley's sister Claire accompanies them and gets romantically entangled with Byron. The group subsequently spends some idyllic almost hedonistic weeks at Byron's villa. Over the next few years, strange, tragic and troubling events occur and whenever they do, Shelley sees her monster lurking in the shadows.