Harry Evans's first years of life were blighted by a brutal stepfather. At the age of five his mother, Sali, married miner, Lloyd Evans, a passionate believer in workers' rights. Loved and cosseted by Lloyd's working class family, Harry embraces their socialism and considers turning his back on his inheritance, a fortune invested in property and businesses. He graduates from Oxford with dreams of becoming an artist and working in a studio in Paris. But when he returns to Pontypridd he finds that his beloved 'grandfather', ex-miner Billy Evans, has lung disease and, when Billy is sent to Craig y Nos, a castle turned sanatorium in the Welsh Hills, the only one free to accompany him is Harry. There Harry meets people who make every precious moment of life count. And two very different women; Diana, a beautiful, feminist medical student, and Mary, an illiterate, orphaned farmer's daughter who is fighting to keep her family together against all the odds. These are women who are prepared to sacrifice everything, including personal happiness to achieve their goals. For the first time in his life Harry falls in love, only to suffer rejection. Harry turns to Billy for consolation, and as his relationship with the old man deepens, he learns about life, love and the responsibility that comes with inherited wealth. But he also discovers the responsibility each man owes to himself to live his life as he, and no one else, sees fit.