It’s 1978. Nero Wolfe, New York’s 300-pound, orchid-loving, epicurean genius detective who fought crime from the seat of his over-sized chair for more than three decades has now been dead for two years. In America, it’s a time of change: Viet Nam, Watergate, free love, smallpox, the reserve clause, and cheap oil are history.

"Welcome to my thirty-year odyssey probing the corners of the art world, catalogues, foreign shores, and cyberspace, all in search of the one Cat Thing I did not yet have. Unlike some collectors who either follow trends or believe they are prophets in the art market, I have collected simply on the catholicity of (1) is it a cat, and (2) do I like it? Therefore, there are no images of unhappy cats, unlucky cats, or even unsociable cats. "My cats” are happy, healthy, and loved, in life and in art"

— Sandy Lerner.

Set ten years after Pride and Prejudice, the novel explores the changes to the Darcy family's life, Europe post-Napoleon, and life in late Regency England with humor, a love of Austen's language, and a credible, creditable plot. Written in Austen's “stile,” the central characters undergo the experiences, self-criticism and self-improvement essential to Austen's heroes and heroines.