Elspeth, a young Scottish actress, is selected by the elusive impresario Lord Coak for an acting career on the Caribbean Island of Barbados. She is briefly feted by the island community, but a tempest kills her lover and destroys the theatre in which she was to star. She is obliged to take on a supposedly temporary and fairly ambiguous role at Lord Coak's plantation home. The closed environment of the estate is stifling, but it institutionalizes her and gives her a degree of status. Dolan's plot is full of unexpected twists but they never free Elspeth from the constrictions of working for an enterprise whose founding principle is racism. It is a world in which there is an oppressive sense of eventlessness. Clearly Lord Coak s grand plan to modernize the estate cannot be implemented without social reform, but the resulting suspension of lives is also perhaps the human condition: our dreams can never be realized. Another catastrophic event breaks the spell and divides the community, many of whom leave in search of a more enlightened society and in so doing become a mythical people. However Elspeth and the reader remain locked into Lord Coak's estate, which starts to decay its shipwrecked people.