The book is divided into six parts, each one based on the point-of-view of several characters, namely: Upon the death of her husband Conor, Ginevra decides to leave New York City, entrust her young children to her late husband's family from Ireland, and return to Wales to stay with her childhood friend, the lawyer and politician Robert Godwin (who is also heir presumptive to the Godwin family estate, Oxmoon).

Robert, who usually prizes logical thinking, willpower and level-headedness, initially expresses annoyance and worry with his feelings for Ginevra (which are mutually reciprocated), but eventually gives in.

With Margaret's resigned tolerance and understanding, Bobby engaged in many sexual affairs to relieve himself of the guilt of having murdered Owen and one of the women he slept with was a teenaged Ginevra.

He takes up mountaineering, and goes off by himself periodically, leaving a bored and slightly paranoid Ginevra alone in their rural setting, with uncomfortable relations with her inlaws, including straitlaced and judgmental John.

Robert suddenly contracts an unnamed degenerative neurological disorder (described later in Part 6 as multiple sclerosis) that first manifests itself as unexplained tremors, later intensifying into full-blown paralysis over the next nine years.

Due to Bobby's mismanagement a workers' strike breaks out, forcing Straker out of Oxmoon, leaving the mansion and the lands back in the hands of the Godwins.

John is also personally affected when his young wife Blanche passes away from a congenital cardiac defect, and his nephew Robin falls to his death through a window.

He's given a choice, marry Constance Armstrong, his American employer's daughter and advance his family's commercial and social standing, or follow his heart and spend the rest of his life with the working-class Welshwoman Bronwen, who is, he feels, the only person who knows his true self.

Home-schooled by Ginevra and living a somewhat sheltered life in a house with a dying father and a sainted deceased older brother, Kester Godwin survives an awkward adolescence to become an author.

His recollections reveal that he has inherited his mother's emotional intensity, her propensity for melodrama and sensual excess, as well as Robert's competitive spirit and obsessive nature, leaving Kester with a manipulative streak that becomes more apparent in Harry and Hal's stories.

Once Ginevra dies, Kester comes into his inheritance, but is an incurable romantic who prefers writing over farming, choosing to invest money in indulging his taste for art and sculpture rather than properly running the estate, much to the disgust of his uncle Thomas, and evoking the envy of his cousin Harry, John's son .