Returning home from his wool mill in France in 1869, self-made Yorkshire businessman Isaac Brookes never suspects that a chance encounter on a train will alter the world's gastronomical landscape. But when he meets, and almost kills, Rodrigo Vermilion- a hunchback midget dressed in rags- Vermilion recognizes in Isaac a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Determined to go into business with the pragmatic Yorkshireman, Vermilion soon convinces Isaac and his son to invest the family fortune in an idea sure to appeal to temperate Victorian tastes: a sweet, fizzy, non-alcoholic fruit drink called RhubarillaTM. And so begins a craze that will have more bizarre and earth-shaking ramifications than even the savvy, irrepressible Vermilion could ever have imagined.