The Continental System of Napoleon Bonaparte was a trading and military system similar in some ways to the current European Community and NATO (without America), but based on enforced treaties not voluntary agreements. By the start of the Nineteenth Century Britain stood alone, except for ambiguous arrangements with the Baltic States and Russia. Similar to the present day were the social divisions that created protests from common citizens, and in the extremes, bloodshed and murder as terrorist activities, as social changes brought about riches for some and grinding poverty for others. Slavery was still practised, as was Impressed Service in the King's Forces. Party politics were in their infancy with two major streams of thought, the conservative Tories and the more Liberal Whigs. The Simpson Family Trilogy compares events of the early 1800s with the present day, in the form of a trilogy of novels, of which Star Crossed is the first.When Kalle Kennedy visits her Great Grandmother, Jennifer Simpson, she finds that the report of the family's genealogist and Jennifer's childhood recollections of stories told to her have parallels in the present. In present day New Zealand, Kalle Kennedy disappears.

She is drugged and tortured by the national Security Service. On her release, she searches for her boyfriend, Marti Carter, who has also disappeared. Realisation of the reasons for her abduction leads Kalle to discover a White Supremacist plot against New Zealand's Moslem community.In 1801, Peter Field is press-ganged into service in King George III's Royal Navy to fight against Bonaparte's attempt to close the Baltic to the British. While preparing gunpowder supplies for the Battle of Copenhagen, Peter uncovers a plot to blow up the Admiralty. His fiancee Isabella Blyde is attacked and left for dead. The Pajaris are merchants from Finland who are caught up in the political struggle to keep the Baltic trade routes open. A series of attacks on Riku Pajari seem to be the work those opposed to the Abolition of Slavery but Juho Pajari suspects his first born, Philip, is behind the attacks.