Adam Faulkner is delivered from the sea onto a burning desert coast. He has to learn to live in his hostile new world. No one knows where he pitched overboard and a religious holiday has just begun. Rescue is on hold. In despair, Anita enlists the help of Adam's Civil Servant brother, Tom and veteran MacDowall, to seek her lover somewhere on the barren Merinam peninsula where inhabitants and vegetation are as scarce as water. As in life everywhere, time is the enemy.