When two ambitious families occupy the same patch of English soil, rivalry takes root and flourishes. Minor hurts, nursed with jealousy, fester into hatred, and the price for this wild and beautiful piece of ground will take more than three generations to settle.

Richard Lanyon is a free man and no villain, but he must answer to the aristocratic Sweetwater family, owners of the land he farms on Exmoor. But even noblemen do not have the power to contain a man like Richard Lanyon. Ready to seize any opportunity to become a landowner in his own right, Richard is prepared to forfeit the happiness of his family to do so.

But no family can grow and succeed without the nurturing hand of a woman, and even Richard Lanyon knows this. Better still if the woman is clever and hardworking and will, or so he hopes, bear sons. With this in mind, Richard arranges a marriage for his only son, Peter. Though Peter Lanyon and his bride, Liza Weaver, settle into their marriage, each harbors a broken heart, lost dreams and unspoken secrets. Richard himself has another unspoken secret, one for which he privately suffers much guilt. Should these secrets ever be revealed, all that he has worked for will be destroyed.

Surviving the betrayals of the past means keeping one foot in the present, and an eye to the future. It is the next generation that holds the power to achieve in one moment what eluded Richard Lanyon for a lifetime.