It is five o'clock in the morning just outside toronto when nineteen-year-old julia walks onto the backstretch at woodbine racetrack. despite knowing little about horses and even less about racing, julia is eager to start her first day at her new job. she is in a dilemma as to where her life is heading. desperate to make enough money to enter a university and escape a suffocating relationship with her boyfriend, she throws herself headfirst into life at the racetrack. she soon discovers, however, that she is terrified of the high strung animals and even worse, that the other workers have little patience for an inexperienced woman. even as the high stakes, male-driven world of racing threatens to destroy her and her dreams, julia perseveres and finds solace in two new friends, who encourage her to fight back. as julia moves up in the ranks, even her friends are unable to save her from the worst threat of all. julia is forced by a man she trusts into a world of deceit and illegal treatment of the very animals she has grown to love, and she may have to sacrifice everything in order to free herself from his grasp before it is too late.