Is America following on the path of pre-revolutionary Russia? Based on the memoirs of those who lived through the decay of the Romanov Monarchy and the rise of Lenin's totalitarian dictatorship, the families of Daniel Mendelev and Countess Evgeniya Borisovna Rostovsky struggle to survive in a world of sweeping cultural and political changes. Daniel Mendelev's quest to understand God in a world going mad takes him on a journey from the impoverished Jewish Pale of Settlement into a prohibited relationship with Evgeniya Borisovna, a young countess born into the Russian aristocracy. When he nearly perishes in a severe famine God delivers him from starvation in a supernatural encounter and opens doors for him to advance as an industrialist. Daniel's brother, Ezra, a commissar on the Bolshevik Central Committee, despises all that Daniel stands for and hunts him down in the 1918 purge of red terror during the Russian Revolution.