Ross Poldark burned with a fierce vision of freedom which was to drive him inexorably into a bitter struggle with the powerful Warleggan family, the cynical mine-masters who ruled the lives of the miners with a cruel and rapacious hand.

           And, under it all, his lusts and passions still raged as wild as the waves which broke against the rocky Cornish coast. For Ross Poldark discovered himself once again — after years of marriage — in the thrall of a woman he had vowed to forget, and his wife in the arms of the very man who threatened to destroy him….