In mid-19th century Britain, a catastrophic event occurs from which ripples will spread throughout Europe and beyond.
Twenty years later, a writer doing research into the tragedy is murdered in London, a cabinet-maker dies in a workshop accident in Leith, Scotland, and a former journalist is run over by a horse-drawn omnibus. The writer's daughter sets off for Scotland, where she and the cabinet-maker's son try to work out the connection between the deaths of their fathers and seek an explanation for them.
The search for answers leads them in unexpected directions and to places neither of them would have imagined they might visit.