At the center of her novel is Kay Lansing, who has grown up in Englewood, New Jersey daughter of the landscaper to the wealthy and powerful Carrington family. Their mansion--a historic seventeenth-century manor house transported stone by stone from Wales in 1848--has a hidden chapel. One day, accompanying her father to work, six-year-old Kay succumbs to curiosity and sneaks into the chapel. There, she overhears a quarrel between a man and a woman who is demanding money from him. When she says that this will be the last time, his caustic response is: "I heard that song before."