The year is 1980. Las Vegas has grown from a crude desert wasteland filled with bawdy miners and bingo parlors into a showplace of dazzling casinos - a gambler's paradise. Fanny Thornton has recently married Sallie's son, Simon, but theirs is not a happy union. Simon is a jealous, domineering man whose suspicions and increasing paranoia about his brother - Fanny's ex-husband Ash Thornton - have estranged Fanny from her four children. But now Ash is ill, possibly dying. Babylon, his life's achievement - and Vegas's most magnificent casino - is in danger of falling into the wrong hands. It is Fanny who reluctantly steps in to take over Babylon. . . Fanny who vows to make her family whole again even as Simon tries to sabotage her at every turn. But when another man offers her the chance for a new beginning, it is a gamble Fanny is determined to take.