Wounded during WW1 and after briefly serving as a policeman in Ireland, Charles' grandfather Alexander "Jack" Ambrose leaves his new wife and baby son in Colchester intent on starting a new life farming on the Canadian prairies, only to return to his family empty-handed four years later.

Why did he leave, what did he attempt to do, what happened, and why did he return? A century later his grandson Charles attempts to understand and connect to a man he had met only briefly, trying to reconstruct those "lost" years by writing a fictionalised account of this period in his grandfather's life.