When Will Savage and Patrick Keane meet, in 1965, at an elite New England prep school, one is an eager convert to the Establishment and the other its scion and sworn enemy. Desperate to shed his blue-collar lineaments, Patrick inevitably is entranced by Will's wealthy, deeply and eccentrically Southern family; he soon becomes both a student of its origins in antebellum Mississippi and an awkward participant in its legacy.

While Will throws himself headlong into the spirit of the age - achieving his apotheosis as a notorious music mogul - Patrick hews to the course prescribed by his adopted class, through Yale (a Savage tradition) and Harvard Law.

But as they pursue their wildly distinct ambitions, the world remakes itself around them - Aquarius collapsing in paroxysms of assassination and rage - and their trust turns tentative and conflicted even as the allure of their prospects darkens. Will's relentless provocations culminate in his sudden marriage to a black woman, whereas for a long time Patrick refuses to risk a private life beyond his role as mediator and confidante.

Still, neither man proves capable of facing his ordeals alone. And only decades later, with each ensconced in some version of the future he once dreamed of, is the nature and meaning of this friendship truly understood - the procession of favor and compromise, differences verging on antagonism and similarities no less surprising, yet more enduring.