As the Civil War erupts, Anthony Levallios of Richmond's Beauvais Plantation foresees that dominion in a new America will be measured not in acres of tobacco or slaves, but in industry and capital. Spanning a century, this panoramic novel by the author of the National Book Award Finalist The Yellow Birds is also the story of his slaves Nurse and Rawls, who overcome impossible odds to be together; George Seldom, a man orphaned by the war, looking back from the 1950s on the void where his childhood ought to have been; and Lottie, adrift in the 1980s and wondering: How do we live in a world built on the suffering of others?