After her first husband is presumed killed in World War I, milliner Carsie Levy marries Chat Nussbaum and together with Carsie's daughters, Sarit and Sophia, they settle into a quiet routine. But between the World Wars life outside the walls of the Nussbaum's red brick mansion on New York City's East 66 th Street is anything but quiet-the politics and pace of the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression contrive in ways Carsie cannot imagine to wrest her of her family, her business and, ultimately, her sanity.