Daniel is twenty-four. He has spent the past 10 years preparing for the priesthood but decides he does not have a vocation. His sister, Grace, offers to finance him for a year to enable him to explore the world and discover himself.
He travels to France and one day, in St Malo, he chances upon the captain of a small boat who invites him to go on a voyage to Glasgow. After they embark, tensions arise between captain and crew and, just as they reach breaking point, the vessel runs into a violent storm.

Daniel is washed up on a contaminated island shrouded in fog, which appears to be uninhabited except for a handful of ferocious sheep and a semi-feral shepherd named Grock .