"There were reasons why Violet Park should have meant nothing to me. She was old. She was dead. She was in a box on a shelf. But I met her one night, by accident, in the middle of the night and she changed everything." When sixteen-year-old Lucas Swain rescues Violet Park's ashes from a mini-cab office, he sets out to discover who she was, and finally faces up to the question of his missing father.