The Industrial Revolution has begun to saturate 1820's England, but there are still quaint and naïve pockets like these binary towns whose inhabitants are resistant to change. Alas, the enlightenment is brought before them when a young bachelor and engineer, Thomas Winter - the son of a wealthy industrialist - moves into the area with the intention of applying science to their fields to produce higher crop yields. Further, their local Anglican parson, Jonathan Moore, begins a series of science lectures dedicated to the memory of his recently departed brother, in which the subjects of deep time, uniformitarianism, and plutonism, formulated by pioneering geologist James Hutton, are introduced alongside pre-Darwinian evolution. Such is taken rather poorly by the towns' Particular Baptists, led by the preacher George Edwards and funded by the recently wealthy Henry Wyatt, who conspire against these scientific men by way of news propaganda, the latter motivated by romantic adversity.