A student in 1940s Notre Dame University gets into trouble for taking a photograph of his girlfriend in a bikini. She is also a drinker and when beer bottles are found under his bed he is expelled. The two reunite at the University of Chicago.

Accompanied by his long-suffering but devoted wife, Rosemarie, trouble-prone Chucky Cronin O'Malley becomes embroiled in the turbulent events of the 1960s.

Chucky O'Malley and his ever-growing clan enter the Reagan years--even as a series of painful shocks tests the family's strength as never before.