Nina Hekla Thera Toba Ransome, a hand-therapist, living in Dublin, Ireland and named after volcanoes, is living a mundane life compared to her exotic childhood. As she recalls how she came to be where she is today her story is enmeshed with that of others: Harry, obsessive volcanologist and her absent father; Helen, her lover, and daughter of an Olympic athlete; Katja, her mother, who died when Nina was three; and now, Southpaw, found washed up on a beach in Ringsend, naked, unidentified, memory-less, on Nina's hospital rounds - and about to change her life forever.