In a shocking yet all too prosaic moment Joe and Eileen O Kane experience a terrible tragedy which leaves them bereft. Winter in Derry sets in overnight, as does a chill between the young couple. Eileen turns to her parents for comfort and Joe finds himself caught up in his widowed father Patsy s regular jaunts around Ireland. A new chapter of Joe s life begins when he is offered a job researching the story of the renowned nineteenth-century Derry ship builder, William Coppin, and his strange connection with the fate of the Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin - a story in which Joe will find echoes of his own. As Joe s interest in Coppin deepens, the two men s lives converge in powerful interlinked narratives of love and loss, and of the unforeseen ways in which the past can illuminate and transform the present.