Conrad Gant dreamed of becoming a capitalist. Instead, he led the revolution that overthrew them, but was this ambition spurned, or just an opportunity seized?

Men make history, but never quite as they please... Conrad Gant knows this simple maxim more than most. He has lived it. Like his father, and his father before him, Gant was born to work in the mills. From an early age he spurned this destiny and dreamed of escaping the rut of his birthright. No mill-man was he, Conrad Gant was going to rise. Conrad Gant was going to become a capitalist.

In the end, the price of his ambition was the destruction of the creatures he wished to join. The boy who would be capitalist became the man who overthrew them. So what turned Gant away from his heart's desire? He tells us the story, and reveals the saga of war and hardship, of hope and tragedy, of love and loss and grief along his road to transformation.

But how much has he left unsaid, as he presents his memorial to Rosa, the socialist who gave him a new dream, a new hope, a new beginning? She was the women he loved and lost and mourned. But did Gant fulfil Rosa's vision -- or betray it for the sake of his own lost boyhood cause?