It is a loose retelling of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights set in post-World War II Japan.
The following day, he encounters Fumiko again and is taken to the house of three snobbish elderly sisters, Harue, Natsue, and Fuyue.
As a teenager, she moved to Tokyo with her uncle Genji or "George", who secured her a position as a maid on an American army base.
Each Saegusa sister had once held aspirations of marrying into the Shigemitsu family, but the only son, Noriyuki, died during the war.
Fumiko spends her time taking care of Yoko, Natsue's youngest child, who is kept close to home and doesn't fit in with the rest of the Saegusa and Shugemitsu members of her generation.
Taro is routinely abused by his family, and Fumiko later learns that he is actually the illegitimate child of one of Roku's nieces and was raised by his uncle after his mother died.
She takes Taro with her to help around the house; however, he is hurt when he visits Yoko in Karuizawa, and the Saegusas and Shigemitsus treat him as a handyman.
When Yoko is eighteen, she contacts Taro again, and she and Fumiko are surprised to discover that his adoptive family used the money meant for his education as a down payment for a small business.
Fumiko's uncle Genji helps to secure him a position as a chauffeur in New York City and Taro leaves, disappearing for fifteen years.
After seven years, Yoko marries Masayuki, the only son in the Shigetmitsu family, finally fulfilling the desire of the Shigemitsus and Saegusas to unite through marriage.
After her second husband dies, Fumiko is persuaded by Taro to work for him in Tokyo and, in her late forties, eventually becomes the career woman she longed to be.
A few years later, Masayuki develops cancer and dies, and he and Yoko's remains are meant to be scattered around the Karuizawa, which is why Fumiko is there in the present.
Fuyue then drives Yusuke home, but not before revealing that, during the period where Taro lived with Fumiko in Tokyo, the two became lovers.
Before his vacation ends, Yusuke returns to the Oiwake villa in secret where he watches Fumiko and Taro scatter Yoko and Masayuki's ashes.
Susan Chira at The New York Times praised the novel for "taking a quintessential Western Gothic and making it wholly Japanese.
"[8] David Cozy, writing for The Japan Times, called the novel "a welcome update" of Wuthering Heights and praised Juliet Winters Carpenter's "fluent translation.