In 1722, after arriving with her brother at the family's Jamaican plantation where she is to be married off, sixteen-year-old Nancy Kington escapes with her slave friend, Minerva Sharpe, and together they become pirates traveling the world in search of treasure.

An invitation to an art exhibit sets off memories in a now grown-up Richard of the pivotal summer of 1976 when, as a lonely and naive fifteen-year-old vacationing in South Wales, he comes under the enthralling influence of the artistic, uninhibited, sometimes cruel, and ultimately tragic Dalton family.

"World War II has just ended, and Britain has established the Control Commission for Germany, which oversees their zone of occupation. The Control Commission hires British civilians to work in Germany, rebuild the shattered nation and prosecute war crimes. Somewhat aimless, bored with her job as a provincial schoolteacher, and unwilling to live with her overbearing mother any longer, twentysomething Edith Graham applies for a job with the Commission--but...