While other boys celebrated their raging hormones by scragging each other from one end of the sports field to the other, Angus Fog was the solitary figure that watched. While other boys played rugby in winter, tagged and bombed each other at the town pool in summer, he sat and did nothing because in his twelfth year, Angus lost his passion. He subconsciously suppressed the why and when the event took place but the repercussions would significantly impact his life. Angus works for ten years as a theatre designer and builder in Wellington, New Zealand, before his mother, frustrated with his lack of artistic success, buys him a ticket to London. There he creates an alter-ego from the clique bohemian art world. He changes his appearance and name and becomes the successful artist, Dante Fog. Dante's initial subject matter is the beauty in other people's childhoods. Later, he searches for beauty in the adult world but fails to find it, until he falls in love with Bronagh. When Dante wakes on the floor of his studio hungover and fearing he may, in a jealous rage, have killed Bronagh or her suspected 'new lover' or both of them, the magnitude of that unknown childhood event resurfaces. Dante must return to New Zealand as Angus to uncover what he suppressed all those years ago.