During the late 1930s Davenport, best known for her biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, spent several years in Pittsburgh, her imagination caught by the drama of American industry.

The story chronicles the family fortunes from the economic panic of 1873 through the dramatic rise of American industry and trade unionism, though waves of immigration, class conflict, natural disaster, World War I, to Pearl Harbor.

The second section covers 1889-1929 and his son Paul, who inherits the mills and manages them well, embracing technology, the demands of the Spanish-American and first World Wars, and an enlightened view of labor.

Energetic, responsible, and worldly-wise, she fights to save the integrity of the family’s mills as they pass into the hands of corporation lawyers and bored Scott cousins.

It is also Claire who expands the story to Eastern Europe, where, as an international journalist, she brings the horrifying events leading to World War II to the attention of an impassive America.