Winston ( Winter ) Crowley is a young Irishman who grows up in Canada, but feels forever bound by family ties to his native Belfast. At the age of (almost) twenty, this boy in a cultural bubble returns to Northern Ireland at the request of his aloof, judgemental father, in a final effort to make things right between them during the course of an extraordinary odyssey, circling Ireland’s wind-swept coastal shores. While father and son get to know each other as adults and equals, Winter learns something of the war-torn history of his homeland, the mysterious split within two branches of the family, and the attitudes of the Irish toward modern warfare generally, in a war-torn world. But conflict isn’t always resolved with bullets. His father teaches Winston a great deal more, including some shocking truths about the oft-time brutal relationship between love, lust, religion and politics. The story of Winston’s voyage is fleshed out with other memories - his comically traumatic circumcision at the age of eight, his meeting with a famous, drunken poet and his chance encounter with a talking horse. Collectively, this weird gallery of colourful snapshots captures the life and times of Winston Crowley, Polymath in the making, named after a British National hero and an Irish nut, his travels, friends and family, his own ruminations vividly explored. If ever there were such a thing as a story with something for everyone, this is it.