A fued between two wealthy families rages across the wildly beautiful countryside of Dartmoor. The Reads are respectable Nonconfirmist shopkeepers; the Hunnicutts dark and stormy High Church landowners. But love - and greed - constantly cross the battle lines, adding new disputes to the old hostility. Until Emily Culverhayes, who marries first a Read and then a Culverhayes, finds herself at the centre of a terrifying web of powerful emotions, intrigue and murder.