Now she is gone and David feels himself destroyed. In search of solace, David returns with his children Incheilich, his parents' baronial home in the Scottish countryside. So overwhelmed with grief is he, that he withdraws from his parents, his children, and ignores his responsabilites at the family distillery. Rather, he spends his days knee deep in mud, focussing all of his energies into the reinstatement of Incheilich's gardens. It is only while working in the gardens that David finds respite from his pain.

It is a crisis at the distillery that forces David to assume hisrole at the distillery and travel to the United States. Though he had steeled himself for the voyage, staying in the home of an old army friend, he quickly finds that he is ill prepared emotionally to face the world once again. David is surprised to find a certain degree of comfort in being a stranger in a strange land. In America, he is freed of all that has happened to him, he is free to reconstruct his shattered life. Wandering the village's streets, David happens upon