Things move slowly in the village of Illthwaite, but that’s about to change with the arrival of two strangers intent on digging up bits of the past the locals would rather keep buried.
Sam Flood is a young Australian mathematician whose grandmother was dispatched from Illthwaite four decades ago, courtesy of the Child Migrant Scheme. Miguel Madero, Sam’s fellow guest at the Stranger House in, is a Spanish wannabe priest-turned historian in pursuit of an ancestor last seen setting sail with the Armada in 1588.
The antipathy between them is instant and mutual, but as they follow their seperate quests their paths become increasingly entangled, with clashes physical and metaphysical, and shocks natural and supernatural, as the tension mounts to an explosive climax.