The year is 1891, when English nurses Clarissa Hamilton and Emma Clarke trek from the Portuguese East African Coast, through plains teeming with wildlife, to the wild, beautiful heart of Southern Africa. Their aim — to set up a hospital in Cecil Rhodes' fledgling colony, Rhodesia, where gold-hungry white settlers, eager to exploit the country's legendary mineral wealth, are enflaming the simmering hostility of the Matabele nation.

More than half a century later, Clarissa's granddaughter Liz Pendennis arrives in the young colony, where the winds of change are stirring the sparks of black nationalism.

Retracing her grandmother's footsteps, she is caught up in a new drama — a controversial dam project that will displace more than 50,000 tribespeople.

From the malarial swamps of the Indian Ocean coast to the banks of the wild Zambezi River, exploration and adventure, romance and superstition, are woven into a tale of two women snared by the spell of Africa.