This the story of two women: a mother and a daughter.

Helen: who leaves her home in Australia to follow her husband to Papua New Guinea in 1946, seven months after he takes up his job. The excitement of life in the wilds of this country is marred by the expectation that all ex-pat children will be sent away to boarding school once they reach the age of twelve.  Hers is a story of loss and tragedy exacerbated by her daughter, Lizzie's, inability to forgive her.

Lizzie: who believes she has been callously abandoned at boarding school and finds her previously idyllic world turned into a nightmare of cruelty, humiliation and sexual molestation.