Young Jane Ward is the young daughter of an upper middle class family living in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. She enjoys a comfortable Victorian upbringing, thoroughly inculcated with the morals and values of the age.

Years of Grace follows Jane as she grows up, falls in love, attends university, and eventually settles down to raise a family of her own. At her heart, Jane is a solidly middle-of-the-road, conservative homebody: not as high-achieving or risk-taking as her friends, but rather preferring to hew closely to the traditional household values she grew up with. While she occasionally longs for a cosmopolitan, romantic life that could have been, she finds contentment in her family and joy it brings.

As the years march on, Jane struggles to come to terms with the way the next generation conducts itself. World War I brings tragedy, and the dawn of the Jazz Age changes how young people live and love in ways Jane simply can’t understand. In this way, she becomes a symbol of a bygone way of life. Jane, and thus her antecedents going back generations, made compromises in life but learned to be content with what they achieved; but does the next generation’s selfish, high-life style really lead to happiness?