In the Durham mining village of Belgate, the legacy of World War I affects rich and poor, socialist and aristocrat, Jew and gentile alike. Howard Brenton, heir to the colliery, back from the trenches with a social conscience but lacking the confidence to implement it... Diana, his beautiful, aristocratic wife, afraid of her dour new world and fatally drawn to the jazzy gaiety of twenties' London... Miner Frank Maguire and his bitter wife Anne, fired by union fervour as they struggle to survive the slump... Esther Gulliver, to whom kindly Emmanuel Lansky offers prosperity beyond the pit... Linked by place, chance and time, the people of Belgate grapple with the personal and general costs of war, coal and childbirth. And in the 1930s, they face together a terrifying new crisis in Europe.