At the beginning of the story, well after the deaths of Drinkwater and his wife, their great-granddaughter Daily Alice falls in love with and marries a stranger, ″Smoky″ Barnable, who she meets at the home of her City cousin George Mouse.

Alice and Sophie's great-aunt Nora Cloud regularly consults an ancient set of tarot cards to find out about such mundane matters as the weather or how soon a visitor will be arriving at the house.

Auberon falls in love with a striking and vivacious young Puerto Rican woman named Sylvie.

At this juncture, Russell Eigenblick, a charismatic and secretive politician, rises in popularity and becomes the President of the United States.

He is opposed by a covert group of wealthy businessmen and politicians called the Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club.

Hawksquill divines that Eigenblick is the re-awakened Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and that he has been called from sleep to protect Faerie.

After a drunken sexual encounter with Sylvie’s brother Bruno, which Auberon considers a degradation, he lives on the streets.

The fairies, who can see the future but remember little of the past, understand the peril they are in but forget why, and they prepare to go deeper into the realms of Faerie; however, this cannot happen unless the extended family of the Drinkwaters comes to the mysterious ″Fairies’ Parliament″.

At the last minute, Smoky – who never really believed in Faerie – chooses not to go, instead devoting himself to finishing the repair of Edgewood′s old orrery, which drew energy from the stars to power the home.

He succeeds, and is persuaded by Sophie to accompany the family, but he dies of a heart attack before he leaves the borders of Edgewood.

The remaining family members walk into the new realm and take the fairies’ place, Smoky’s funeral turns into Auberon and Sylvie’s wedding, and thus the Tale is finally completed.

"[8] In Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, David Pringle described the book as "a work of architectonic sublimity" and wrote that "the author plays with masterly skill on the emotional nerves of awe, rapture, mystery and enchantment.

"[10] A number of readers and critics have described Little, Big as magical realism, perhaps in an attempt to defend it from being categorized as a work belonging to the sometimes maligned field of genre fiction.