This is the story of the Hastings family—their secrets, their loves and losses, dreams and heartbreaks—captured in a seamless series of individual moments that span the years between the first World War and the present. The novel opens in 1914 as William, a young factory worker, spends one last evening at home before his departure for the navy…His son Billy grows into a champion cyclist and will ride into the D–Day landings on a military bicycle…His son, in turn, Will, struggles with a debilitating handicap to become an Oxford professor in the 1960s…And finally, young Billie Hastings makes a life for herself as an artist in contemporary London.