Taking refuge in a mission house in a remote hill town in India, an Englishman fleeing the dark undercurrents of contemporary life bonds with a Padre's daughter against a backdrop of escalating religious tensions.

''In a remote Australian settlement a young wife with an untellable secret reluctantly invites her neighbour into her home. A Quaker spinster offers companionship to a condemned man in a Colorado jail. In the ice and snows of Siberia an office employee from Birmingham witnesses a scene that will change her life. At a jubilee celebration in a northern English town a middle-aged alderman opens his heart to Queen Victoria. A teenage daughter leaves home...