Steeped in its bleak and beautiful landscape, Mortford is a place of secrets and memories: of bitter divisions and shattered dreams. Returning to this Dartmoor village where he grew up, Gabriel attempts to come to terms with what he lost as a boy so long ago. Slowly the mysteries hidden in this small community on the edge of the moors begin to unravel. But one of Gabriel's memories remains sharper than all the others: that of his boyhood friend Michael, the tenderness of their first summers and the violent betrayal that destroyed it. And, intruding on his self-enforced isolation, the beautiful Mrs Sarobi, meddling Doris Ludgate and the frightful spectre of Jim of Blackaton will become bound in with Gabriel's search for acceptance and the possibility of love.