This book covers about 40 years of one family's history. In 1905, old Celia Dunne is deciding who should inherit the family estate. She settles on her great-nephew, Humphrey Dunne, after she assures herself that he really loves the place like she does and would settle down there and raise his family. Her condition is that even though he already has 3 children, he must have another daughter and name her Celia, and that daughter must be the next heiress to the estate.
The Dunnes move in, years go by, two more children are born (including the aforementioned Celia), the kids grow up and get married, and two world wars are survived. This is another life-goes-on type of book, with distinct episodes but no one climax or plot thread. In the middle there is a lengthy and 99% exact Mansfield Park parallel story, with a "Henry and Mary Crawford" playing with the emotions of a "Fanny and Edmund." The details are, point-for-point, the same, in everything from putting on a play to the roles of "Edmund's" two sisters.
Enjoyable reading. A nice little loose thread is left at the end that is pretty fitting.

At the beginning, when old Celia Dunne is talking to her great-nephew, there are a couple of pretty amazing remarks she makes about things she has seen (she's nearing 100 years old) and stories that her grandparents had told her about things they had seen...these kind of conversations remind one that what we call "history" is not really all that long ago, when you start talking in terms of generations (albeit long-lived ones).