For twenty years Christian Benediktsson has led a quiet life as William Randolph Hearst's butler. His days are filled with the rituals of Hearst's life and the demands of running a grand house. But in his most private thoughts and memories, he relives another life: his abandonment of his wife and children in Iceland for an actress in New York, a reckless affair and a tragic death, financial downfall, and the profound retreat from life that led him to Hearst's San Simeon. No one else knows the secret of the man he once was-husband, father, businessman, lover-and, ultimately, even he will choose to forget that this person ever existed.