Matthew Molloy, bright and educated, longs to leave behind his miserable existence on a small farm in Ireland. He yields to pressure and sets aside his dream until one day, he walks away, leaving his wife and small son to fend for themselves.

In the summer of 1971, his granddaughter Nora finds herself in Shoal Cove, Newfoundland, where Peg Barry reveals the secrets of Matthew's reclusive life. The story slips back and forth between Ireland in the early 1900s, a country struggling to rediscover its identity and restore its nationhood, and Newfoundland in the 1940s, a country about to relinquish its nationhood and join Canada.