The novel is a "family saga". That is, it describes several families and their passing through time, in San Francisco. The novel is part of a trilogy featuring the same families. This work begins with the Lavette familly, a French-Italian couple who move to the USA and have a son. Mr. Lavette is a fisherman and teaches that job to his son, Daniel, from childhood. But disaster strikes. An earthquake shakes the city, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Daniel's parents die in a fire after that. He works for three consecutive days and gives the money to a friend of his father, Cassala, as a deposit. That is the beginning of the Bank of Sonoma and the beginning of the rise of Daniel to become a multimillionaire.