Sweeping from the Great War, through the Jazz Age to the 1940s, this unforgettable tale follows the entwined lives of the Fentons, an aristocratic family from Yorkshire. Thea, the eldest daughter of Viscount Gilbert Fenton, flouts the unwritten rules of her class by embarking on a love affair with Hal, the fiercely socialist son of one of her father's tenant farmers. Carrie, her close childhood friend and granddaughter of the Viscount's nanny, has always been expected to marry Hal but when she goes into service she finds herself longing for the one person she can never hope to marry. Olivia and Violet are the two younger Fenton sisters. And then there is Rozalind, their American cousin, who is secretly in love with a married U.S. senator. Her ambitions to become a photojournalist will also take her into the heart of Hitler's Germany.