Glenn O'Brien, an Irish American, gets a call in his Boston office about a horse from an old steeple-chasing buddy in Ireland. In need of a break from creditors and the recession, he puts operations on hold and takes a flight to Shannon. He hunts the horse over the Clare countryside, gets involved in some hotly disputed wrangling for him and takes on a gutsy wager which ends in a match ride to hounds through the tough country of the Burren. After the hair-raising chase, he is indeed alone with hounds when they account for the fox, but he is hopelessly lost on the moors. Finding his way out becomes a desperate journey, that sets him on a quest to search back in history and find out who he really is. The fast action takes place in present-day Boston, Ireland, and England and switches to 19th-century England in the heydays of the great fox hunters Tom Assheton Smith and Squire George Osbaldeston.