When Australian Julie Reagan discovers a book written by her great-aunt, Bette, about her life in Borneo in the 1970s, she decides to find out more about the author. Julie is intrigued to know why her grandmother always refused to talk about her sister, who seemed to have disappeared from the family, 60 years before.

In the hope of finding clues to this family mystery, Julie makes contact with her cousins she's never met and is invited to stay with them at the plantation founded by her great-grandfather in Malaya a hundred years ago.

What Julie finds in modern Malaysia sends her spiralling through generations of family loves, deaths and tragedy while she also confronts the challenges of the present, until she discovers her grandmother's shocking secret.