London, 1878, Ellen Lark’s world forever changes when she falls ill to scarlet fever and loses her hearing. Determined for her daughter to have a “normal” life, her mother painstakingly teaches Ellen how to read and finds she has a gift for memorizing passages and lip reading. With the help of a wealthy patron, she enrolls Ellen into a school for the deaf where Ellen for the first time meets others like her.   Ellen excels at her studies, which leads her to be introduced to Alexander Graham Bell and his new way of teaching deaf students – Visible Speech – which allows deaf people to perfectly pronounce words but without having any comprehension of their meaning. While it doesn’t serve a practical purpose, it allows the deaf person a mask of normality. Ellen is captivated by Mr. Bell and his many dreams for a variety of inventions. However, he becomes less engaged in their studies and in Ellen as the race to create the telephone takes o