Framed by New England's 1938 Hurricane and advanced through flashbacks, voices of the land, and historical lore, this is the story of MacFarland, a Scots Highlander whose identity is altered by forced exiles. His story emerges in seventeenth-century Connecticut, the era of the Pequot War between Pequots and English colonists in league with Mohegans. Like MacFarland, Sassacus and Uncas, the Pequot and Mohegan sachems, become "identities in exile."


MacFarland is driven from Scotland to Guildford, southwest of London. Shortly after meeting the Puritan Roger Williams, MacFarland emigrates to Massachusetts Bay Colony, then to the Connecticut shoreline, where he befriends a Quinnipiac family and later the two sachems, as well as the commander of Fort Saybrook.


Through the Pequot War, MacFarland is forced to decide where his loyalties reside. Ultimately, he finds himself estranged anew and embarks on a "journey-quest" northward along the Connecticut River and disappears, lost in this final exile.


As inspired by psychologist Erik Erikson's notion of a lifelong series of "identity crises, " MacFarland must assume new identities as he endures his exiles. His exiles reflect our search for our own place between "civilization" and "wilderness" - and beyond.