Meg Newport plays to win. She's beautiful but disfigured from burns sustained as a child. Her family life is a confusion of bitterness and denial. She wants love, but wealth and power seem more reliable in the man-powered great hotel business of the 1960's. While still at university, Meg takes a part-time job at a Holt hotel. Billionaire owners Steve and Nell Holt see the fire in Meg, much like their elder son, now dead. They pay for reconstructive surgery for Meg and offer her a job upon graduation-with strings attached, most notably their younger son Blaine, who needs a hardheaded wife. Even when her goals begin to destroy the trust of marriage, family, and friends, Meg continues to build her empire. When her singleness of purpose is blasted by loss and alienation, Meg discovers a new world to explore, one where love equals gain, not loss, and the power to build serves an entirely new purpose.