In a smoky gambling den in 1940s China, a drunken young man runs through his family's fortune, losing their ancestral home and all their possession. This staggering loss proves to be their salvation…and the first step in a thrilling odyessey of survival that will take them through war and revolution, love and loss, tragedy...and triumph. Through the terrors of China's civil war, the passions of the communist takeover, the betrayals of Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward and the tragic mistakes of the Cultural Revolution, their lives unfold across four decades of momentous change..bound by love, driven by the strength of the human spirit and touched more than once by the hand of fate.