'She was too restless to work or write. She thought of Richard, of her unmanageable desires and her un-abatable ambitions... My life is in pieces, I am nothing, I have achieved nothing; yet I will, she thought'

In the month after the 1918 Armistice a young woman, Hervey Russell, comes to London to seek her fortune. Inexperienced and poor, she has all the strength and stubborn will of her Yorkshire grandmother and all the dreams of youth. Hervey is alone, her husband in the Air Force still, her baby son in Yorkshire. She plunges into the social and political ferment of London life with her friends T.S. and Philip, her slovenly, amicable neighbor Delia, and her lover, the American Jess Gage. This is the beginning of Hervey's story...