Virgil Williams.........Bruce's father...........who passed in the late 1980s......had two masters degrees.........one in theology............and one in English.........from the U. of Chicago.........and was a Methodist minister................the church.....Jesus...........me.....

'Billy With Jesus', going to work his first day in the coal mine underneath the fictional Welsh town of Aberowen in 1911.

Three years later, the main story begins. Edward "Fitz" Fitzherbert, Earl Fitzherbert, who maintains a country estate in Aberowen and licenses the land on which the coal mine is built, hosts a party for many powerful people around the world. His guests include:

• Lady Maud Fitzherbert, Fitz's sister, who is far more liberal than her conservative brother.
• Walter von Ulrich, a German nobleman and a former schoolmate of Fitz's. He and Maud begin at the party to act on the mutual attraction they have felt for years.
• Graf (Count) Robert von Ulrich, Walter's Austrian homosexual cousin.
• Gus Dewar, a highly educated American who is also a close adviser to President Woodrow Wilson.
• Bea Fitzherbert, Fitz's wife, a Russian Princess.
• King George V, King of the British Empire.
• Mary of Teck, wife of King George V.

Major characters introduced after the party include Grigori and Lev Peshkov, two Russian orphans who work in a locomotive factory and have personal reasons to hold a grudge against Princess Bea and the rest of the Russian royal family. Grigori and Lev's father was executed by Bea's aristocratic family for alleged improper grazing of cattle on Bea's family's land.

The overall theme of the novel revolves around common people trying, and many times succeeding, in throwing off the yokes so often placed on them by a society (largely focused on Britain and Russia) dominated by the landed aristocracy.