This novel is set in the present (i.e. the time of publication), but also includes a storyline from the World War II era. The historical element concerns Jane Thackeray, the wife of a Presbyterian missionary in the New Hebrides and her relationships with the islander people, an American fighter pilot and a French plantation owner. The present-time storyline is about an Australian actor who is in Vanuatu to film a Hollywood romantic war epic.
