At this novel's heart is the spiritual quest for love and the consequence of capricious fate.

Filled with astute insights in to human behaviour and motivations and written in a distinctive, stylish prose with psychological depth of characterization, it is a most memorable story about love and friendships, some passionate, the drifting moments captured in vivid set pieces.

The story moves between Belfast and America in the 1950's and 1060's, a time of change and upheaval... Our hero, Stephen MacAlindon known as Maca, is a boy of unknown parentage brought up by his loving adoptive parents. Maca is intelligent and ambitious but has a wild streak which makes him kick against the traces in the conservative Catholic community he lives in. He gets to a prestigious Catholic grammar school and is doing well, but a reckless act results in him being sent to a borstal. He has a hard time there but his tenacity enables him to get a scholarship to Queen's University and the chance of a degree.

Given the opportunity to go to Boston, young Maca takes it and using his Belfast connections gets a job in an investment bank. All those qualities - intelligence, daring, drive and ambition - that got him into trouble in Belfast, enable him to thrive in America. He rises in the bank and soon gets a promotion to the Stock Exchange floor in New York, a chance he is eager to take because it gets him away from a failed love affair. Freed from the oppressive cultural environment of his youth, religious and political, Maca on discovering the American way gains the confidence to find and express his true self. In New York he finds his niche and a woman who loves him. He settles in and becomes an American citizen. However, he cannot escape Belfast and news from there, like the death of his father, calling him back. Maca resists until loyalty to a friend gets him into trouble too big to gloss over as attempts to cover his friend's mistake lead to ever increasing losses for the bank that cannot be hidden forever. Reluctantly Maca goes back to Belfast and picks up the threads of his old existence, just as unrest in the city is about to come to a head with violent consequences...