A bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry into a fortune; the young writer Henry James, turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; a British officer during the American Revolution carries on a courtship that leads to murder; and, in Newport's earliest days, an orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she has inherited. A spellbinding tale of five intersecting worlds weaves a brilliant tapestry of ambition and desire