After building a successful group of restaurants, Val Reynolds meets and marries jeweller Hugo Gilard, and forms the Gilrey Corporation. On Hugo's death, Val finds herself fighting against managers within the corporation who seek to take it over and turn into a more ruthless and profit-driven concern than she and Hugo envisaged. The battle involves Val's four adult children and their partners, not all of whom are wholly supportive of her.

The business jungle and its effect on the people within it is exposed in the ongoing battle for control of the Gilrey Corporation, and its effect on a family at a vulnerable time shows the different characters and aspirations of them all.

After describing family matters historically in Howell Grange and over three days of a marriage in The Densham Do, Bruce Harris turns to the business politics and conflicts of the Gilard family in this latest work.