A reckless wager between a fading tennis pro and a drunken party guest launches an odyssey that weaves together three centuries of ambition and desire. An urbane Gilded Age bachelor embarks on a high-risk scheme; the young Henry James turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; an aristocratic British officer's courtship leads to murder during the American Revolution; and, in Newport's earliest days, an orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she inherited.