This book chronicles the life of George Anderson Bullock Jr. who was born into privilege in the latter part of the 1800s in Philadelphia. It describes some of the prominent ancestors from whom George received a powerful legacy, and then follows his career from thriving businessman and lawyer to scofflaw and moral miscreant as he fled the city with his lover around the turn of the century. It tracks his movements throughout the Midwest as he abandons several children, his wife, and a lover along the way, to eventually end up in the small town of Goshen, Indiana, where he settled and lived until his death.

In the aftermath of his death, the book not only describes George's children's legal efforts to inherit part of his great uncle's significant fortune but also the traumatic emotional legacy George left for his children and many of the people he'd encountered throughout his life.