On the face of it, An Ovel is the story of an anonymous young woman who leaves the Isle of Man on the eve of World War One to embark on an eight-year journey that will take her as far west as the western coast of the United States and as far east as Palestine and Siberia, to thirteen locations where she will drop off thirteen books in order to fulfil a mysterious mission.

But scratch the surface ever so slightly and an entirely different tale emerges, an intertwined tale of three siblings, from shortly before their birth to well after their death. The solitary tale of Catherine, the eldest, a seamstress struggling to recover from the life-long scars of a traumatic betrothal, finding herself ever falling back on her unique ability to use a thread and a needle to repair all that is torn or broken, from dresses and noserags to skeletons and hands. The fateful tale of Alfred, the middlest, a scribe whose misguided goodwill brings the wrath of the elements upon him, and whose monumental obsession with old age and death changes not only his life and that of his immediate family, but ultimately the face of the planet itself. And the optimistic tale of Tanya, the youngest, an alienated mute disowned by her very mother for being a changeling, yet able to overcome her abusive childhood to experience the love and friendship of humans and animals alike.