England, 1912. The largest, most luxurious ship the world has ever seen is about to make its maiden voyage. Teddy Morland will be aboard the Titanic -- along with his niece Lizzie and her husband and children, on their way to start a new life in Arizona. The nation thrills with patriotic pride in this masterwork of British engineering. But back home at Morland Place, Alice, Teddy's pregnant wife, is consumed with nameless anxiety, and Lizzie's mother, Henrietta, fears she will never see her daughter again.

Other Morlands have their own struggles. Jessie and childhood friend Violet are adjusting to the restrictions of married life, the one exchanging the grandeur of Morland Place for a small suburban villa, the other commanding Brancaster Hall, where her freedom is even more curtailed by her husband Lord Holkam. And for Jack, love and marriage remain an insoluble problem, though he finds freedom in the air, designing aircraft and training men for the newly formed flying corps.

But all personal problems are about to be subsumed by a greater tide of restlessness as the nations of Europe slide inexorably towards a war which no one wants, but which every day seems more inevitable ...