It's 1953 in Kefalonia. A seventeen year old boy loses his entire family and girlfriend in the earthquake, so he rows out to sea in an attempt to commit suicide and is capsized in a storm. He's rescued and taken in by a fisherman and his wife on the island of Paxos, and treated like their own son, but he cannot bring himself to speak. Therefore, the local cats become his real family. Recovering slowly, he lives humbly as a fisherman, finding his place in the community. But his relationships are fraught by the past, and the world is changing; fish are vanishing and tourism is growing. Ciro is admired as someone who stands up for justice. However, as the sole family survivor, he always feels he should have done more with his life, for them, if not himself. That is until the day he is forced to evacuate the island with his cats, and his true heroism surfaces. Ciro becomes a national hero - a modern day Greek god.
