The first involves Klara Gyeroffy and her father, an aeronautics hobbyist, in their establishment of the low Earth orbit settlement of the Uplands.

With the advent of more efficient propulsion technology, space travel reaches a new level of attainability, the Uplands phenomenon being a product of direct access, for those wealthy enough, to the lower orbits.

In 2059 Klara's father Miklós flies Kristin Janzen Kooistra, a tenant who requires a hideaway, for their Upland lodging.

The next portion of Gradisil is largely an exposition of the environment's domestic capacity, Roberts investigating the challenges and novelties of day-to-day Upland life, the question of zero-g as hindrance and boon, and ever-present logistics issues.

The orbit settlement is now transformed into both a political and military battlefield, with the US anti-Upland and EU pro-Upland, and receives increasing coverage by Earth media over the coming years.

Two new narrators are introduced: Lieutenant Slater of the United States Upland Corps, providing insights into the exigencies and metamorphoses of that nation's military-industrial complex in the late 21st century; and Paul Caunes, Gradisil's second husband, who would later betray her to US authorities.

As the Uplands comes into its own as the first extraterrestrial country in human history, Gradisil consolidates her role of political activism and de facto media ambassador.

The novel leaps forward twenty years, to focus on an adult Hope, on business excursion to the Uplands, trying to secure an investment for a mining project on Mercury.