The story is about the Ashbys, an English country-squire family. Their centuries-old family estate is Latchetts, in the fictional village of Clare, near the south coast of England. It takes place in the late 1940s, after World War II.
The Ashby family consists of Beatrice Ashby ("Aunt Bee"), a spinster of about 50, and the four children of her late brother Bill: Simon, 20; Eleanor, 18 19 and the twins Jane and Ruth, 9.
Bill and his wife Nora died eight years earlier. Since then, the Ashbys have been short of money. Bee has kept the estate going by turning the family stable into a profitable business and combining breeding, selling and training horses with riding lessons. When Simon turns 21, he will inherit Latchetts and a large trust fund left by his mother.
Simon had a twin brother, Patrick, who was older than him by a few minutes, but soon after Bill and Nora died, Patrick had disappeared and left what was taken to be a suicide note.
The title character, Brat Farrar, is a young man recently returned to England from America. He was a foundling. At the age of 13, the orphanage placed him in an office job but he ran away instead. He ended up in the western US, where he worked at ranches and stables for several years and became an expert horseman, until a fall injured his leg, leaving him with a limp...
