Declan Shaw, a young Irish journalist, has seen more than his share of war-in North Africa in World War II and afterward in Palestine as witness to the birth of the State of Israel. In early 1950, he arrives in Washington, DC, to head up The Manchester Guardian's local bureau. Offering a European perspective on American politics, he covers the onset of the Korean War, the Cold War, the rise of McCarthyism, the nascent Civil Rights movement, and the presidential campaign of 1952. He also encounters many of Washington's most influential personalities, including Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, and a young, up-and-coming congressman named John F. Kennedy.

It's an unfamiliar world full of new people, most of whom hail from circumstances far different from his own, but Declan throws himself into reporting this new era. When he meets Tay Riggs, scion of an old Washington banking family, he begins to realize that the concept of the "American Dream" might one day include him too. In a twist of Homeric fate, he makes a decision that will change the course of his life forever.