The book was written in the context of the Harding administration's Teapot Dome scandal and takes place in Southern California.

The main character is James Arnold Ross Jr., nicknamed Bunny, son of an oil tycoon.

Bunny is torn between loyalty to Dad and his friendship to Ruth and her rebellious brother Paul, who support the workers.

Back home, Bunny enrolls in college, and he becomes increasingly involved with socialism through a classmate, Rachel Menzies.

Bunny decides to dedicate his life and inheritance to social justice while Roscoe moves to get control of the bulk of Dad's estate.

Bunny marries Rachel and they dedicate themselves to establishing a socialist institution of learning; Eli, by now a successful evangelist, falsely claims that Paul underwent a deathbed conversion to Christianity.

James Arnold Ross and Bunny stay in a hotel at the intersection of Beach City Blvd and Coast Drive, similar to Beach Blvd and what would later develop into Pacific Coast Highway, where a hotel and water resort once resided in the early 1900s.

The character of Eli Watkins is loosely based on the famous evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson.

[3] The 2007 feature film There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is inspired by the novel, but the story is too different to be considered an adaptation.