The first book of the magnificent epic by Ken Follett that follows the story of five families through the 20th century...

June 22, 1911. As King George V ascends to the throne of Great Britain, Billy Williams, a child from a family of Welsh miners, earns his first wage deep underground... Love and hate will inevitably connect the Williams family with the aristocratic and powerful Fitzherbert family, which owns the mines: Ethel, Billy's sister, falls in love with the Earl Fitzherbert, breaking moral and class barriers.

But Lady Mont, the Earl's sister, also walks on dangerous ground, as she becomes enchanted by the exciting Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London... Their lives will be intertwined with the fate of three more people: Gus Dewar, an ambitious young advisor to the American President, and the Peskov siblings from Russia, whose dream of immigrating to America is lost in the whirlwind of World War I and the October Revolution...

From the dark tunnels of the mines to the illuminated salons of the upper class, from the battlefields to the corridors of power and the bedrooms of the powerful, from London to Petersburg, Washington, and Paris, Ken Follett crafts an epic novel that can only be compared to his masterpiece, The Pillars of the Earth.

The first part of a gigantic fresco that depicts the great adventure of the 20th century through the story of its distinct, captivating heroes...