The time is November 1899 through February 1900; the place is Ladysmith, a small railway town in the British Colony of Natal near the border with the Boer Republics.

The Boers have surprised the world with initial victories over the British Army and have now laid siege to Ladysmith.

As they shell the town from the surrounding hills, people die, disease is rampant, structures collapse, starvation looms, there is panic about enemy agents, and yet the British muddle through.

The setting of Giles Foden’s novel is historically accurate, and a number of historical figures appear as characters; for example, the Boers arrest a young reporter named Winston Churchill as he struggles to reach the besieged town, and an Indian lawyer-turned-medical volunteer named Mohandas K. Gandhi becomes more committed to his philosophy of active non-violence.

Bella, the Irish hotelkeeper's daughter, falls in love, first, with a British soldier and later with a Portuguese barber, thus defying convention and rebelling against her father.