The story of Harry Clifton is mysterious and extraordinary. It’s as if he’s being driven through life by two opposing forces. Light, whose earthly manifestation is the port beggar Tar Jack, a former navy captain. And the dark one, which found its embodiment in Walter Barrington, the owner of the shipping company. Yesterday the son of a laborer in the Bristol docks, today a student at an elite school, tomorrow a man with a foreign homeland and a foreign name, who tried with such a strong-willed blow to resolve the bonds of an unhappy fate. “Only time will tell” is the first novel of the Clifton Chronicles, the story of the triumphs and defeats of several generations one family, a story unfolding on two continents separated by ocean waters.