For generations, the Nash and Douglas families have reigned in the town of Nashborough. In the 1920s, the comfortable traditions and entrenched hierarchies of the South seem firmly fixed in place.
The younger generation has no reason to think that life will not go on like this forever.But buffeting changes are about to sweep across the American landscape. Over the next three decades, the Depression, World War II, the rising influence of Hollywood, and the burgeoning Civil Rights movement will have a profound effect on both families.
Yet the most shattering effects of all will come from an increasing desire for personal freedom and its resulting clash with traditional family life.Seneca Nash, a brilliant lawyer, and his beautiful, courageous, but thoroughly undomesticated wife, Dartania née Douglas, epitomize the rising generation. Theirs is a marriage built upon a compelling infatuation -- for each other and, equally, for their own individual longings.
As the country moves further into the modern century, the Nashes and Douglases are witness to enormous change and upheaval that threaten a fast-disappearing way of life.
