Derek Ridley is a father with a remarkable capacity to love, but whose emotional fragility makes him feel unworthy of love himself. When his marriage breaks down, he starts making reckless attempts to get his family back, eventually hatching a desperate plan to take his young son to the Rocky Mountains where he believes a wilderness utopia will be found. Initially the adventure represents an exciting and cathartic sense of freedom for father and son, but as the narrative crashes between past and present, and the stakes continue to rise, Derek's world of denial and half-truths are challenged in the most unexpected of ways.