When 14-year-old Tom's family immigrates to Boston from England in 1804, Tom goes to a merchant ship as an apprentice sailor. A British frigate impresses sailors from the ship, however, making the small, young, blond, handsome Tom a cabin boy on the brig HMS "Raven," the duties of which include opening his thighs for the ship's officers and sailors. They change his name to Jamie and sail to the Barbary Coast, where Jamie, going on shore leave in Tripoli is taken into a male brothel
Professor M. moves in with landlady Mrs. G. and becomes obsessed with her nymphet daughter Dolly who is "Lolita" forever in the middle-aged man's mind and thoughts.
Life was becoming complicated in hiding his fetish for fourteen-year-old boys in Washington, D.C., so a music professor and symphony orchestra celloist moved to rural Bridgewater, Virginia, to avoid temptation. An invitation to mentor a fourteen-year-old violin prodigy at the Garth-Newel music center in the Allegheny Mountains, though, in addition to the charms of the son of a B&B owner, puts temptations squarely in the professor's path.