Jim Drever is a man apart. Twenty years a Stillman at a Highland distillery, his closest relationship is with the machinery he monitors, the movies he's obsessed with. It's the worst winter in years and the world is closing in. A strike is looming and his daughter is about to get married. His son's ever-weirder behaviour is becoming a worry and his marriage has disintegrated into savage skirmishes with a wife he barely knows. Then the emails start to arrive from Cuba, sending him letters from his dead mother, and Jim can't stay on the sidelines any longer.