When a young man washes up on the sands of St Piran in Cornwall, he is quickly rescued by the villagers. From the retired village doctor and the beachcomber, to the priest's flirtatious wife and the romantic novelist, they take this lost soul into their midst. What the villagers don't know, though, is that Joe Haak is a city analyst who has fled London, fearing he may - inadvertently - have caused a global financial collapse. But is the end of the world really nigh? And what of the whale that lurks in the bay?