Wealthy, beautiful, and apparently content with her industrialist husband and thirteen-year-old daughter, Anne Wadsworth appears to be nothing like the passionate eighteen-year-old of her youth. But when former boyfriend Frank Churchill comes back and sends Anne a letter asking to see her, her life is thrown into a tailspin. For twelve hours, while Anne is making her choice, the reader is carried from person to person, viewpoint to viewpoint, discovering in a stream-of-consciousness style not just what happened between the two former lovers, but how this saga has affected all those around them.