When the rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and 500 fellow refugees from Sri Lanka's bloody civil war reaches the shores of British Columbia, the young father believes the struggles that he and his six-year-old son have long faced are finally over. But their journey has only just begun. The group is thrown into a detention processing centre, with government officials and news headlines speculating that among "the boat people" are members of a separtist militant organization responsible for countless suicide attacks--and that these insurgents now pose a threat to Canada's national security. As the refugees are subjected to heavy interrogation, Mahindan fears that a desperate act taken in Sri Lanka to fund their escape may now jeopardize his and his son's chance for asylum.