Maydina and Biri escape from the seal hunters who enslaved them. Their intent is to escape back to their traditional lands, but they quickly learn that these lands have been settled and their people have now scattered.

Ann Cutler is the 18-year-old adopted daughter of middle-class parents in an Australian country town. She has been told that she is French-Polynesian and that there is no record of her birth parents beyond knowledge of their nationality. The truth is that she is born of her adoptive father, Doug Cutler, and an Aboriginal woman called Alice Wilson, who lives locally.