Heroine Fenella Lundgren, a flat broke recent graduate, accepts a job as an assistant to the fabulously wealthy Rostunger family who live in a converted sugar factory, which also houses a private aquarium. Thurl and Nina Rostunger, her employers, begin to impose increasingly complex moral conundrums which compete with Fenella's need to survive financially and to help her friends and family.

Spanning the discovery of California by the Spanish through the 1990's, Sugar House is an alternative history of the decimation of an indigenous population, the Gold Rush, the Great Fire and Earthquake, the rise of industry and migration, The Summer of Love, notable crimes, as well as many other historic events.

When Fenella discovers a forgotten orphan and a cephalopod with supernatural abilities, she must navigate the moral murkiness between making a living and making oneself. Will Fenella and the octopus save their loved ones? Or will the mighty Sugar House bring about their downfall?