[3] The novel follows a mysterious British traveller named Mr Smith who arrives in New York City in 1746 and upends the lives of the merchant and political classes.

He meets Lovell's daughters Tabitha and Flora at home and soon afterwards also encounters Septimus Oakeshott, secretary and spymaster to George Clinton, governor of New York.

Septimus and Smith become friends and the pair begin to plan a production of Joseph Addison's Cato, with the two female roles played by Flora and Tabitha.

Impressed by the 46-year-old ex-professional actress Euterpe Tomlinson and her recitation at a dinner marking George II's birthday, Smith convinces a reluctant Septimus to give her a part in the play - forgetting until it is too late that this will lose Tabitha her role.

"[4] Alexandra Harris, writing for the Daily Telegraph, called it "verifiable gold" and applauded "a novel of gloriously capacious humanity, thick-woven with life in all its oddness and familiarity, a novel of such joy it leaves you beaming, and such seriousness that it asks to be read again and again.".

[6] In the New York Times, Dwight Garner commended the novel as "a high-level entertainment, filled with so much brio that it’s as if each sentence had been dusted with Bolivian marching powder and cornstarch and gently fried".