'Blue earth.' Billy-Ray said suddenly, and smiled.

'What?'

'Blue earth -- that's what the sea is like -- blue earth.'

Lucca frowned, held her hair back from her face with a hand. 'Didn't you say you came from there? Blue Earth something?'

'Blue Earth County, Minnesota.'

The Reichmanns are a prosperous farming family. The envy of Blue Earth County, they delight in their good fortune and their three blonde sons. But when World War II shatters the dreams they worked so hard to build, the youngest, Billy-Ray, vows to confront the world that has so betrayed them. It is no accident that he becomes an unrivalled oil prospector, driven to tame the untamable, to control the uncontrollable.

From the oil fields of Alaska, to the country estates of the English aristocracy, Billy-Ray seeks forgiveness in the arms of the women he seduces, and begs deliverance from the landscapes he so ruthlessly exploits. But the earth is a capricious beast, affording him riches and power, yet leaving him always wanting.

Set against the dramatic elements that constitute the world we live in: the unfathomable power of the sea, the unstable nature of the ground we walk on and the destructive force of human endeavour, Jules Hardy, highly acclaimed author of Altered Land and Mister Candid, takes us on an epic journey from the battlefields of World War II to the oil rigs of the late twentieth century.