In 1901 London, as the precise social order of the Victorian era winds down and the forward-looking Edwardian order takes wing, three strangers meet in the city's stony Highgate Cemetery. Beautiful Lavinia revels in the elaborate trappings of the past. Plain Maude strives to shape the future. Simon Fields, a boy their age, is bound by poverty and professional to the cemetery.

As they explore the prejudices and flaws of a changing time, they bring their very different families together and ultimately discover that their fates are intertwined.