Charles Darwin has wound up on a beach house overlooking the Pacific with a girl young enough to be his daughter. One hundred and forty five years have passed since the publication of The Origin of Species, and over a hundred and twenty years since Darwin’s own death. But his peace is rudely disturbed when his old friend Thomas Huxley washes up on the beach, closely followed by the Bishop of Oxford. And Darwin suddenly finds himself entangled in a sparkling comedy of life and death, love and loss, and the sex life of hermaphroditic barnacles.