In 1900 Lady Charlotte French-McGrath is mistress of Garonlea a huge gothic house in Ireland. She rules her household and her family -- husband Ambrose and children Muriel Enid Violet Diana and Desmond -- with a rod of iron. Desmond s marriage to the beautiful lively Cynthia and several years later the onset of the First World War are the two events which finally and irrevocably break Lady Charlotte s matriarchal hold. Cynthia enters the Jazz Age and on the surface her life passes in a whirl of fox-hunting drinking and love-making. But the ghosts of Garonlea are only biding their time: they know the source of their power a secret handed on from one generation to the next.