Looking for a lift through the vast empty landscape. A woman stops, & offers a ride. She is young, rich & beautiful.
...In a small seaside Irish town in the late 1950s, two very different children are growing up, shouting their hearts' desires into the echo cave, praying their destiny will lead them far from Castlebay, a place empty & grey in the winter but overbustling with visitors in the gaudy days of summer. One of the children is Clare, shopkeeper Tom O' Brien's younger daughter. A favourite with the local schoolteacher, she wins a scholarship to University College, Dublin & seems set for academic glory. The other is David Power, the doctor's son. He dreams of escape, also via Dublin, as a medic. But the paths of these two children cross again in a quite unexpected way, & eventually both their destinies lead back to Castlebay.