Her deception is uncovered when she gives birth to a son. Quickly deported back to Orkney, Isobel dies over half a century later still awaiting her son's return. Like many of Thomas's fictions, this work revolves around lost children, in this case more explicitly than in most. A number of them surface in this novel, not least a remote descendant of Isobel's, killed in the battle of Scapa Flow just near her final resting place. Such coincidences provide little consolation for the book's characters, including Magnus Inkster, the clergyman narrator, who finds his faith coming unstuck as he contemplates Isobel's misfortunes and begins to doubt the author-like schemes of his god.