The Reverend Hector Gillean is a ghost. At the start of the last century he built a ship and sailed west from the Hebrides to search for a promised land in the heart of the Canadian wilderness. His great-grandson retraces the voyage, 200 years later, through three generations of family history. The Oatmeal Ark voyages into the deepest places of the heart, exploring love and hope and loss, on a wave-rocked, wind-tossed travel adventure of ghosts and boats. Its story is at once a record of a remarkable pilgrimage, a fantastical narrative and a glimpse at the universal quest for a better world.