In the mid-nineteenth century, sisters Grace, Eva, and Claire Clinton leave their Belfast home to pursue their dreams in a rapidly changing world. Grace longs for the excitement of London. Eva plans to conquer the theater, and Claire hopes to follow in their physician father's footsteps.

Their personal dreams are centered in a kaleidoscope of social change: the Industrial Revolution, suffrage, and rising nationalism in Ireland. Even the telegraph alters family connections, and Sigmund Freud in Vienna shifts how the world-and the Clintons-views feelings and thoughts. The sisters and...