Thurston House is the most lavish mansion that the richest man in California could buildin the 1880s ... the largest house that San Francisco's exclusive Nob Hill has ever seen ... and a living palace of built for one woman: Camille. Enchanting, raven-haired and fiery, she is the all-consuming passion that Jeremiah Thurston has found in the autumn of his life. When she leaves him, bored by his love for his mines, by his endless hours of hard work, Thruston House becoems an empty monument to lost hopes and vanished dreams - lifeless but for one small person. Sabrina, child of that love, grows up believing her mother is dead. Her only legacy from Camilles is the legendary beauty; in all other ways, Sabrina is her father's image: willful, headstrong and loyal to his passion for the land and his work. Suddenly, at 18, her life changed with his death, she makes the fateful decision to rule Thurston Mines.