Charlie Kollock grows up in post-war Delaware with a distant father, and a mother who is 'delicate'. He goes to Oxford to study, where he forms relationships with several woman: Elaine, the daughter of a farmer, whom he met as a child; Miriam, a young Australian Jewish girl, whose family returns to England when her grandfather dies; and Sophia, a student cellist of American Jewish heritage. Woven through these relationships is that with his mother, a disturbingly magnetic woman whose grasp of reality is fragile. Her visions and dreams form the lens through which Charlie views the world. Chief among these are her visions concerning the enigmatic 'Daughter of Abraham', with whom Charlie's destiny, she is convinced, is linked. Charlie cannot shake off these visions. Is this one of his mother's delusions? If not, who is this 'Daughter of Abraham'?