Angus MacGrath, artist, sailor and navigator, is lost―caught between a remote wife, a disapproving father and a son seeking guidance. Far from his coastal village in Nova Scotia, war rages in Europe, and among the missing is Angus's adventurous brother-in-law whose unknown fate sets Angus on an uncharted course, with profound consequences for those he loves and those he comes to love. Angus defies his pacifist upbringing and enlists to find his wife's brother. Though assured a safe job as a military cartographer in London, he is assigned instead to the infantry to the blood-soaked mud of France, where his search begins. At home his young son, once wide-eyed about the war, must navigate uncertain loyalties in a village succumbing to war fever. Separated by the ocean they once sailed together, Angus and his son search for what it takes to survive, each trying in his own way to return to the other. Every character in this exquisitely told story seeks to protect what matters most in the face of war's upheaval.