An Irishman abandoned by his wife who goes travelling to leave the scene of his loss. A neurotic Dutch girl with a dark secret. A Finnish woman who has moved to Los Angeles to find her father, her only clue a name and number scribbled by her mother just before she died in childbirth. Three people, two trying to let go of their past and one trying to find hers, whose lives are woven together in an epic tale of love, sex and death spanning two continents and the 20th Century. A tale which moves inextricably towards a heartstopping climax on Christmas Eve.