After a lifetime at sea, Captain Michael Blaine has retired to an abandoned, remote Cornish village. He is the only inhabitant until Elizabeth Green, American movie star and one-hit-wonder, comes to see her mother's birthplace, just for a couple of hours. But soon she finds herself stranded, then forced to make the decision she has spent a lifetime avoiding. Peter Benson's beguiling novel is about dreams fulfilled, lives affirmed and a love as unexpected as it is late, confirming his place as one of the most individual voices in modern British fiction.