Continues the story begun in the author's novel, "Look Away," telling of James and Kevin Bannon, brothers whose personal animosity is exacerbated when they fight on opposing sides of the Civil War.

Sixty year-old Doriel Waldman, a Polish Jew born in 1936, is on the verge of insanity until Dr. Therese Goldschmidt draws him out with his story of surviving the Holocaust in hiding with his father while his mother made a reputation for herself in the Polish resistance--only to die in an accident shortly after the war.

In 1949, thirteen-year-old Francine goes to Catholic school in Los Angeles where she becomes best friends with a girl who questions authority and is frequently punished by the nuns, causing Francine to question her own values.

After the death of her father, King Henry VIII, in 1547, thirteen-year-old Elizabeth must endure the political intrigues and dangers of the reigns of her half-brother Edward and her half-sister Mary before finally becoming Queen of England eleven years later.