Bridey Sullivan is a young American who has fled a peculiar and traumatic upbringing in Washington State. Searching for a new beginning, she arrives in Athens, Greece, in 1989, and quickly finds work as a "runner," riding trains looking for tourists to lure back to the four-dollar-a night Hotel Olympos in exchange for a small commission and a free place to stay. There, she meets a queer couple, English poet Milo Rollack and Eton dropout Jasper Lethe. As the trio "run" trains, slip in and out of homelessness, and drink away their meager earnings in seedy corner bars, they form a unique kind of family. But when they befriend an IRA fugitive, they become inextricably linked to an act of terrorism that will mark each of them for life and force them apart.